When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she lamented over her husband. And when the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD. 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. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and 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 and of 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 have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’ …David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD.” And 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.” 2 Samuel 11:26-12:10, 13-14

What would you do if someone came up to you and asked you if he could talk to you for a few minutes? You say, “Sure, what is on your mind?” He answers you by saying, “I need to tell somebody that in the last month or so I have broken all Ten Commandments.” “All Ten of them, how could you do that?” He begins to tell you what he has done in his life lately. “First, when it comes to God, everyone thinks I am a Godly man. But deep down it’s all a lie. I have not put God first in my life, when I pray and use God’s name I know I’m a big hypocrite. When I am in God’s House on the Sabbath everyone thinks I am so Godly. But it’s a lie.” “Why is it a lie?” you ask. “Because of all the other commandments, the ones about sinning against my neighbor” He then proceeds to tell you about how he broke Commandments 4 through 10. “I have to tell you that I coveted. I specifically coveted my neighbor’s wife.” Oh, oh. “I then broke the commandment about adultery. I seduced her and to be honest I got her with child. Then I got rid of her husband by murdering him. I then stole his wife and married her. And I lied about it all and tried to cover up my sinfulness.” You are by now standing there with your jaw hitting the ground in amazement and terror. And as you stand there in awe because nobody, nobody could possibly have done such heinous evil he finishes off by telling you. “So that is my story. And my name is King David.”

Everyone has been fooled except for God. And Nathan the prophet reminds us that God is never fooled by sin. And ultimately every sin, even when committed against another, is really a sin against God. That is what makes it so wrong. You can never make the claim that “Hey, I wasn’t hurting anyone, really.” You always hurt God. And in this case David hurt so many others as well. For the Bible says that the “thing” which David did, and this is the real translation, The thing which David did “in the eye of the Lord was an evil thing.”

And because of that we Christians like David need to confront wrong in the world. The sad thing is that this is what most of us and most of our churches and Pastors do not do. We have some kind of notion that we should just love and understand the sinner and that means tolerating the wrong and never warning a person that even if the world approves of something God may not. Of course we do it lovingly and with Jesus’ cross in mind. We don’t have to immediately leap to condemnation because as I read the Gospel reading Jesus did not immediately leap to condemn the sinful woman who came to Him. In fact, our goal is not to condemn the sinner alone; it is to restore someone to God. My hope as a Pastor when I work with someone trapped in a lifestyle of wrong or in habits that are destructive and wrong is not to find an opportunity for me to yell at them and tell them how foul they are. My hope is that with the help of God’s Word that person might look within and realize for himself or herself how wrong life has been. Nathan did that today. He did clearly point out the wrong. Yes, he did clearly say, “You are the man.” But his ultimate goal was to hear David himself say, ‘I have sinned against the Lord.” Because that’s when David could then be restored and Nathan could have the much more joyous task of saying, “The Lord has also put away your sin.”

The reality is that David knew what he had done. He simply would not acknowledge it. How do I know this? Listen to what David wrote first in Psalm 32: “When I kept silent my bones wasted away, through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer…. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.” In another psalm which is psalm 51 in our Bibles, David specifically writes about this particular sin with Bathsheba. He said, “I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.” You see David ultimately knew the One he had sinned against-- God. And it drove him as he wrote in Psalm 51 to seek the only hope he had: “Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness, let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.”

But make no mistake. It is not cheap. It is not fluffy and it is not sweet. It is a forgiveness that comes out of a brutal justice. Because the story did not end with Nathan’s words, “The Lord has put away your sin, you shall not die.” It ends with, “Someone else is going to die in your place.” In this case it is a baby. It is the nameless son of David born to Bathsheba and him out of their sin. This child payed the penalty of David’s sin. And you and I in horror say, “Why? What did this child ever do to be so robbed of life? What did this innocent son of David ever do that he had to be the one to die? I mean, “Can’t God just forgive and let it be? Can’t we just end on the nice note that God has taken David’s sin and just put it aside? David was guilty after all; and David did what God wanted: He confessed his sin . God got what He wanted. Now can’t we all just go on? I thought God was a loving God?” But there’s only one problem with this entire conclusion:

Uriah the Hittite is dead. Uriah has been murdered by David as surely as if David shoved the knife in him. What of Uriah? Is he to have no justice? Is he so unimportant that nobody cares if he lived or died and was so unfairly robbed of life? God cares. God is loving. God is also just. David was spared. But someone payed the penalty for his sin.

It is filled with such love that in a few weeks some of us will be in Kenya, Africa. And we will hold the hand of a man dying from AIDS. He has been rejected by his family and his village because having gotten this disease he has brought shame to himself, his family, and his people. He is an outcast and he is dying alone. But when we hold his hand and can say to him, “Jesus Christ has forgiven you. He is not ashamed of you. He is with you always and He will never ever cast you off.” --- that’s where this passage comes alive today.

And it’s where it comes alive for you. What you have done may have ruined life and life might never be the same - and David did bear the scars of violence his entire life through as Nathan warned him would be the case. For you I don’t know if you will have scars or not; a merciful God may take those away too. But He will definitely take away your brokenness with Him. And He will never take away His love for you and His promise to be with you no matter what. That is the power of Christ’s forgiveness! May it be yours today. Amen.