The Slippery Slope of Sin
And The Might of God's Magnificent Mercy
2 Samuel 12.1-7a
And the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him, and said to him, “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. He brought it up, and it grew with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meager fare, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was loath to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb, and prepared that for the guest who had come to him.” Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man. He said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; 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!”
We meet David for the first as he is shepherding his father’s flock. The prophet Samuel, having received a nudge from he Lord, is looking for the next king. He checks through progeny of Jesse, and finally lands upon David as the one to lead the Lord’s people.
And then there’s Goliath, the terrifying Philistine warrior out on the battlefield when handsome little David takes a smooth stone and topples the giant.
David. The young prince, skilled with a harp, the empire builder, the psalmic poet. David. So much promise. David rules over Israel at her peak of glory. You read through the story and you almost want it to end before the fall. But that’s not how life works.
Here’s the story: In the spring of the year, the time when kings go off to battle. David sends out his mighty army and they ravage the Ammonites. But he remains in the city he renamed after himself. He has it all. Power, prestige, purpose. And yet, one day, he paces on the roof of his home, higher than any other, and he engages in a bit of tom-peepery. (That’s not a word, but you know what I mean)
His eyes fall upon Bathsheba. What he sees is beyond PG-13. So David sends a servant to inquire about the woman who has claimed his imagination. Isn’t she the wife of Uriah, the Hittite, one of your warriors? But that’s no matter for our shepherd boy turned King of Israel. He sends for her and he does to her what kings do.
This isn’t a romantic comedy. This isn’t a meet-cute. What David does to Bathsheba is what we now call a felony. And now, done with his wants, David sends Bathsheba away. Alas, she is now with child and she returns to tell her king.
David sends for his advisor Joab and commands him to bring Uriah to his court. “Hey Uriah, you’ve been such a good warrior. I think you deserve some time off. Why don’t you go home to your wife. Enjoy some R&R. I insist.”
But Uriah does not go to his house. He camps out beyond the door. Why? Because the nation is at war. He tells his king that he can not, in good conscience return home to enjoy his home and she in it, because he has his own soldiers waiting in the fields of battle.
You see what David is hoping to accomplish? Covering up his misdeeds, his sin, his crime?
And so, David commands Joab to send Uriah to the front line of the battle and then have everyone else draw back so that he may be struck down and die.
Uriah dies, and in an act of “mercy” David adds Bathsheba to his already growing harem, and will give birth to a child, and then another in the future named, Solomon.
And scripture says, “What David did displeased the Lord.”
David. The pride of Israel! A life of such promise! From the shepherding fields to the inner court of the kingdom. O how the mighty fall!
Karl Barth says the most impressive part of David’s story is the shoddiness of it all. Barth says, if only David had been caught up in a greater program of evil, but instead he is so human.
First, David asserts his power over and against Bathsheba. He treats her as an object and not as a fellow human being made in the image of God. And then, David clumsily tries to deceive her husband to cover up what he did. It doesn’t work. So then through the power and machinations of the throne he has Uriah killed to save his own hide.
Lies beget lies. Violence begets violence. The slippery slope of sin.
All the while David engages in the all too human practice of self-justification! It isn’t easy being the king, no one knows the pressure I’m under, don’t I deserve a little bit of happiness? So what if she’s married? Who cares what I do so long as nobody gets hurt?
When I lived in North Carolina I was invited to play drums for this remarkable church in Chapel Hill. Every week the band would practice during the week and then we would lead worship on Sunday. We grew in our faith together, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. And one Sunday, after I sat down in the pew to receive the Word from scripture and sermon, the lay leader of the church stood up to make an announcement. She said we had a surprise guest preacher for the day because the church was to receive new pastoral leadership immediately. Why? The senior pastor and the associate pastor had just run off with one another.
They left two families in their wake, and a whole church.
The wages of sin.
And so, the prophet Nathan marches right up to David throne room. “My king, I come with word about two men from a certain city. One rich, the other poor. The rich man had it all, but the poor man hand only one little lamb. He loved it like it was his own daughter, cradling it to his chest day and night. But a traveler came to the city and the rich man, not wanting to waste his own vast resources stole the poor man’s lamb and served it for dinner.”
“Criminal!” Cries David. “Lock him up. Better yet, hang him on a tree for all to see.”
And Nathan says, “You are the man.”
Thus the prophet proclaims a litany against the king, as if there parable were not enough.
“God made you king! God rescued you from Saul! Every good thing you’ve ever tasted, touched, seen, heard, and smelled has been a gift from God. You have so much! Why have you taken more? You broke no less than half of the ten commandments!”
And David says to Nathan, "I have sinned against the Lord.”
He confesses the condition of his condition. For to sin against another is to sin against the Lord. There’s no denial now, no skirting the situation, no passing the buck. David owns the truth.
Nathan says, “The Lord forgives you.”
That’s the most shocking part of the whole story. Forgiveness is right there just as soon as David speaks the truth. Well, the real truth is that forgiveness comes before the confession, that’s God’s disposition. And doesn’t that just grind our gears?
Who among us wouldn’t like to see David squirm a bit under the truth? Perhaps we would like to see him receiving a just punishment for his misdeeds. Well, read the rest of 2 Samuel and you’ll see what happens. There will be consequences for his actions. But the sin is removed.
David will bear the burdens of his actions, and his words, and his choices. But God refuses to abandon him to his own devices.
David is confronted by the truth, a truth he long avoided, denied, and covered up. And the truth sets him free, but not before it is done with him. The truth takes David to the low place. But God is in the business of elevation and resurrection.
The house of David will fall, but from the stump of Jesse a new shoot will grow.
What does God do with David and his sin? What does God do with any of us and our sins?
One day, in the city of David, shadows darken as a cross is raised. Upon which is nailed the last king to come from the line of David. What does God do with us sinners gathering at the foot of the cross? What does God do with us Davids who take and break and sin and suffer?
My sin, oh the bliss, of this glorious thought, my sin not in part but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more; praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
The cross is a sign of truth. It is a sign of our sin, our shortcomings, our situation. And the cross sets us free. But not before shaking us to the core, not before confronting us with the truth.
The pastor turned theologian Jim Nestingen was once in a season of ministry that had him traveling long hours and many miles from conference to conference. And he hated it. Not only did it keep him from his family, but he was a larger man and sitting on an airplane felt to him like penance.
This is how Jim told the story of one of those flights.
“I was flying coast to coast and I got on this plane and the guy sitting next to me was every bit as big as me. We buckled up as best we could and go ready for takeoff. Sitting there on top of one another, I’m sure we were a sight to the rest of the plane behind us.
“And since we were practically on each other’s laps, it would felt strange if we didn’t visit and chat. He asked me what I did for a living. I said, ‘I’m a preacher of the gospel.’ Almost as soon as the words got out, he shouted back at me, ‘I’m not a believer!’
“And yet, once we got to cruising altitude, he started asking me about being a preacher. After a bit he told me again that he didn’t believe. And I said, “Okay, but that doesn’t change anything. Jesus has already gone and done it all for you whether you like it or not.” The man was quiet after that for while, but then he started up again and at first I didn’t know what he was talking about really, until he started telling me stories about the Vietnam War, and how he’d been an infantryman and how he fought at all the awful battles, Khe Sanh, the Ten Offensive, Hamburger Hill.
“He said, ‘I did such terrible things for my country and when I came home my country didn’t want to talk about it. I’ve had a terrible time living with it. Living with myself.’ And he went on like that the whole flight, him giving over to me every little thing he had done. As the flight was about finished, I asked him, ‘Have you confessed all the sins that have been troubling you?’
“‘What do you mean confessed? I’m not confessing!’ ‘You’ve been confessing the whole flight and I’ve been commanded by Christ Jesus that when I hear a confession like that to hand over the good and speak a particular word to you. So if you have any more sins burdening you, nows the time to hand them over.’
‘No.’ He said, ‘I’m finished.’ And then he grabbed my hand quick as a flash. He said, ‘But I told you, I’m not a believer. I don’t have any faith in me.’ And I unbuckled my seat belt and said, ‘Well, nobody has faith inside them. Faith alone saves us because it comes from outside of us, from one creature to another. I’m speaking faith into you.’
“So I squeezed myself from the chair and stood up. The stewardess came and made a fuss for me to sit back down and I ignored her, which meant that others started looking our way. I heard them tell me what I couldn’t be doing and I said to all of them, ‘Christ our Lord commands me to do it.’
“And they got really quiet after that. So I put my hand on the man’s head and I said, ‘In the name of Jesus Christ, I declare unto you the entire forgiveness of all you sins.’
“‘But you can’t do that.’ He said.
“‘I can and I must. Christ compels me and I’ll do it again!’ So I handed him the goods, again. I spoke faith in to him, and I shouted it loud enough for the whole plane to hear, ‘In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven!’
“And just like that the man started sobbing, weeping in his seat. And so I sat down and I held him in my arms like I was holding a child. The rest of the plan was silent. They knew something important was happening right in front of them. The man’s life was breaking open. He was being set free. Jesus Christ, by his spirit, was raising this man from the low place, from the dead, and even if they didn’t know how to put it that way, they knew it was grace they were seeing.
“After he stopped sobbing, as the plane was landing, he asked me to tell him one more time, as if he couldn’t get enough of the Good News. So I did. And then the man wipe his eyes and said, ‘If that’s true, it’s the best news I’ve ever heard. It’s unbelievable. It’s too good to be true. It would take a miracle for me to believe something so good.”
“And I laughed and told him, ‘Yeah, it takes a miracle for all of us.’
“After the plane landed, we were getting our bags down from the overheard compartment and I gave the man one of my cards. I told him that he wasn’t likely going to believe his forgiveness tomorrow, or the next day, or a week from now. When you stop having faith in it, call me and I’ll bear witness to you all over again. And I’ll keep doing it until you do.
“And wouldn’t you know it? That man called me every single day, just to hear me declare the truth of the gospel. It got to be he could’t live without it. And so I told him every day up until the day he died. I told him every day because I wanted the last words he heard in this life to be the first words he would hear Jesus say to him in the next.”
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Now hear, and receive, the Good News, Christ died for us while we were yet sinners which proves God’s love toward us, in the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven. Amen.