My Sunday Skl

So wait, he did it…he won?

A baby boy came, all nice and proper. The cover-up was complete. Bathsheba was his wife. His child was legitimate. And the only other person who knew, Joab, was an accomplice to murder so there was no way that he was gonna talk. David had sinned, like many of us, and he would’ve gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those meddling kids. Sorry, wrong story.

David seemed to be in the clear. But let’s check 2 Samuel 11:27. “But the thing David had done displeased the Lord.” Things would be fine if the Lord didn’t see it. Life would be perfect. David would’ve gotten away with the girl of his dreams, and murder of course. But the Lord saw it. We may not get caught today, but the Lord has a lot of tomorrows in store for us.

In David’s case, this took about a year. But then, God sent the prophet Nathan to visit David. Nathan knew what David was like and knew better than to outright accuse him of murder. So Nathan told David a profound and touching story (2 Samuel 12:1-4).

When he came to him, he said, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. ² The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, ³ but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.

⁴ “Now a traveller came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveller who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”

How did David react?

David was angry. How dare someone who had a lot of lambs take a poor man’s only lamb that he loved like a daughter.

⁵ David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die! ⁶ He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”

According to the Law at the time in Exodus 22:1, if a thief stole a sheep, he had to pay the owner back with four sheep. But this wasn’t good enough for King David. He wanted death.

Imagine that. What a hypocrite right? But David probably didn’t even realise. Sometimes we look at the immorality of others and ask for the worst to be done to them under the pretence of discipline.

Once David had basically incriminated himself, Nathan hit him with the truth, calling him out as the man in the story. But remember, this wasn’t Nathans indictment, it was the Lord’s.

David’s crimes were later laid out in full. He had no more excuses. Nowhere to run to. His judgment was set. As Luke 12:48 says, “from everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded”. In all this, God still spared David some grace. Under the Law he should’ve been killed on the spot, and this wasn’t the case. However, this wasn’t the time for David to start celebrating. He would soon reap what he sowed.

WANT MORE? PART 5