A Loving God Confronts the Chief of Sinners!

4th Sunday after Pentecost, 7/7/19
2 Samuel 11:26-12:10, 13-15


A Loving God Confronts the Chief of Sinners!
I. Because sin matters eternally
II. Because grace abounds daily


When you’re faced with a problem, what do you do? I’m speaking in general terms here. When something goes wrong in your life, what do you do about it? Well, the obvious thing to do is address the problem. You meet it head on. You determine the cause and consider your options for arriving at a solution. For instance, the vehicle you drive has started to make a noise you’ve never heard before and you’re rightly concerned. Unless you’re mechanically inclined and have experience in repairing automobiles, you take your vehicle to a mechanic to assess what’s causing the noise and do what it takes to fix it.

But there is another course of action when faced with a problem in your life. Do nothing and hope that it goes away all on its own. Going back to that noise in your vehicle—if your vehicle has over 100,000 miles on it, you might decide that the noise isn’t worth fixing. You know what’s causing it and the parts and labor to repair it are more than you’re willing to spend on a vehicle with that many miles on it. So, you live with the noise.

When faced with a problem in life, you can either deal with it or do nothing about it.

But what happens when the problem is sin—something that you’ve done wrong, something you’ve done which violates one of the commands of the holy God? Your options with the problem of sin are strikingly similar to the problem of the noise coming from your vehicle. You can face your sin head on, recognize it for what it is—a sin against the holy God—repent of that sin and look to your loving God for its solution, which is none other than the forgiving blood of your Savior, Jesus Christ. Or, you can choose to ignore it and hope that it either solves itself or goes away. But this isn’t some annoying noise coming from your vehicle; this is sin, and sin is serious. If it weren’t, your God would never have done something so drastic as sacrificing his one and only Son for you.

This morning we have before us the account of King David taking that latter method of dealing with his sin. He chose to ignore it in the hope that it would go away. But sin never goes away on its own. And a loving God would only put up with David’s hard heart for so long, and then he dealt with it. He confronted David with his sin.

And that’s when David came to his spiritual senses. What he had done was reprehensible. Certainly, he would have agreed with the Apostle Paul that he was the chief of sinners. But is any sinner really any better? And so, a loving God confronts us with our sins this morning just as he did King David. A loving God confronts the chief of sinners! Let’s see how as we focus on this familiar Bible event.

Part I.

Sometimes crimes are so heinous we can’t imagine how they can happen and how the perpetrator ever thought he could get away with it. Last August our nation watched and listened in horror as Chris Watts of Colorado sobbed in front of TV cameras over the murders of his pregnant wife and two daughters. How could anyone be so wicked as to commit these murders? Turns out that Chris Watts could be and was. He murdered his own family! How did he ever think he could get away with it?

King David was fairly certain that he could get away with his heinous sins. Recall that about a year prior to the event that occurred in our text, David had committed adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of one of his most loyal and trusted soldiers, a man named Uriah. In order to cover up that sin, he had Uriah murdered and then took Bathsheba to be his wife.

I realize that what David had done was fairly common among kings of his day. We still hear about such sins today, among the rich and famous as well as more common people. Somehow David figured that as king, he could get away with it.

But remember who David was: he was God’s chosen ruler over God’s chosen people. God had given David tremendous responsibility and, along with it, came tremendous standards. Simply stated, God couldn’t let David get away with this.

Even worse, look what this sin was doing to David. We sang about it earlier in Psalm 32, which David wrote about this very event in his life. “His strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.” His guilt was killing his conscience. It was literally eating away at him.

But worst of all, David was living in unrepented sin. He was living in unbelief. He had rejected what God said about his sin and had rejected his forgiveness. The God of Israel had a king over his chosen people who was heading for hell.

God could have done what David had chosen to do about his sin—nothing. But more than once God described David as a man after his own heart. The Lord loved David deeply, so much that he couldn’t simply let this sin go. He had to confront David. And so he sent his prophet Nathan to David as we heard about in this reading earlier. In a marvelous way Nathan wove a story, and when David declared, “This man deserves to die!” Nathan leveled the divine boom on him, “You are the man!” And then listen again to these precious words from David’s lips, words that he hadn’t spoken for a year, “I have sinned against the Lord.” In the words of Psalm 32, he acknowledged his sin and didn’t cover up his iniquity any longer.

And where there is repentance, there is forgiveness.

A loving God confronts the chief of sinners because sin matters. It matters eternally.

It’s so easy to take sin lightly. After all, the world is full of sinners. We’re included, every one of us. And we sin so often that we can’t count them. Often, we’re sinning and don’t even realize it. Sin comes so naturally because we’re naturally sinful from birth. With so many sinners and so many sins, it would be easy to make light of sin. In fact, our world does. It not only makes light of sin, it finds sin to be enjoyable. It actually promotes defiance of God’s holy demands on every person. It’s easy to make light of sin.

But if sin doesn’t matter, then there’s no point in being here this morning. If sin doesn’t matter, then Jesus doesn’t matter either. And our God could choose to do nothing about it and let us whistle on our way to hell, but he doesn’t because he loves us. And so he calls on us to repent of our sins daily. We begin worship each Sunday doing just that. Because sin matters. It matters eternally. It matters so much that it took nothing less than God taking on human flesh and blood and sacrificing himself for it on the cross. In Christ, in Christ alone, there is forgiveness for our sins. There is even forgiveness for a chief of sinners like me, like you. Thank your God that he loves you so much that he confronts you with your sins!

Part II.

What do you want to be known for in life? Perhaps you don’t want to be known for anything. You just want to live a quiet, peaceful life. But, if that’s the case, then that’s what you’ll likely be known for. Perhaps you want to be known for being a good employee, a loving spouse, a caring parent, a responsible citizen and exemplary member of society. You aspire to be a good Christian person.

What do you think your God wants to be known for? Man, the possibilities are endless, aren’t they? How can we possibly choose one? We don’t have to, because our God tells us in his word that he wants to be known as the God who is faithful, loving, and forgiving. He does not treat us as our sins deserve. Instead he is merciful and gracious towards us.

And that’s the other reason that a loving God confronts the chief of sinners—because his grace abounds daily.

If you recall the closing verse of our text, you might want to argue that point with me. It says, “The Lord struck the child that Uriah’s wife had borne to David, and he became ill.” Later, that child would die. What kind of God would do such a thing?? David should have been the one who should have died!

Precisely! But God was gracious to David. And, in a way, he was gracious to this child in that he called this boy home to heaven before he ever had to experience how evil this world is. God should have put David to death, the chief of sinners. Precisely!

And he should do the same for me. For you. But he doesn’t because he’s gracious, loving and forgiving. As sinners who sin daily, we deeply need to live in that saving grace daily, to recognize how sorely we have sinned, to flee to our God with repentant hearts and to hear his gracious words of forgiveness in Christ.

In the words of Psalm 32, “The Lord’s unfailing love surrounds those who trust in him.” A loving God confronts the chief of sinners because grace abounds daily.

In the King James Version of the Bible, the Apostle Paul wrote, “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Rom. 5:20). Each sin carries with it the sentence of death in hell. The grace of God in Christ who forgives sin not only removes the guilt of sin, he gives us life with him. It would be grace enough if God only removed the guilt of sin once and gave us the opportunity to prove ourselves worthy of his love. But that would never work. Not with the chief of sinners. Instead, his grace comes to us daily, forgiving our sins and assuring us of life with him in heaven. His grace abounds to us every day of our sinful lives.

Now what kind of God would do that? Only your God who loves you with his sacrificial love, who loves you with his eternal love. A loving God confronts you with sin so that he can wrap you in his love. Thank God that he does that for you! Amen.