David Sees Bathsheba
Tom Shrader walks through 2 Samuel 10–12 and Psalm 51, tracing David's moral failure with Bathsheba from the moment of temptation through murder, confrontation, and confession. Drawing on James 1:14–15, Shrader shows how lust conceived in the heart leads to sin and death, and how David's undefended confession — 'I have sinned against God' — becomes the turning point toward restoration. The teaching closes with a reflection on grace as the word that precedes change and produces hope, grounding that hope in the sacrifice of Christ rather than human effort or reform.
“We plan, we prepare, we execute, and then we trust God for the results.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: So You Really Want a King?
Recorded: 2009 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 50 min
Themes: temptation, lust, confession, forgiveness, sin, restoration, grace, accountability, struggling with temptation, recovering from moral failure, feeling unworthy, husband, leader, new believer, dealing with shame, seeking forgiveness
Scripture: 2 Samuel 10:1-19, 2 Samuel 11:1-27, 2 Samuel 12:1-13, James 1:14-15, Psalm 51, Psalm 32, Romans 15:13, 1 Thessalonians 4:13, 1 Timothy 4:10
Theological Themes: hamartiology, nature of sin, repentance, sanctification, atonement, propitiation, conviction, justification by grace
Full Transcript
David and Bathsheba: A Story of Sin, Redemption, and Restoration
Open your Bibles to 2 Samuel chapter 10. If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand and the guys will bring you a copy — it's around page 213 or 233. If you don't have one, just raise your hand and they'll make sure you get a copy.
I told you that when I got back from summer vacation I was going to share what I learned. I changed my mind as I started to put some of that together. Long story short, I'm going to do it in Priority Living instead. If you're curious about it, you can show up to one of those studies, or simply check online in two or three weeks — it will be posted there. I did you a huge favor by sparing you what I learned on my summer vacation. And if you do go to Priority Living, don't bring a razor blade with you, because what I learned is depressing.
We're going to cover 2 Samuel chapters 10, 11, and half of chapter 12 today. That sounds like a lot, and it is, but it will go pretty smoothly. The focus is going to be on a story that even if you've never been to church in your life — whether you're here in the main room or over in the conference center, where services are running simultaneously — you've probably at least heard sketchy details of. It's the story of David and Bathsheba.
I should also remind you that after the services, members of our pastoral team will be in front of both buildings to pray with you, offer praise and worship, or whatever you might need.
David's Weakness and the Road to Bathsheba
This story magnifies a weakness we've already seen in David. They always say it's gold, glory, or girls that trip people up. For David, it's girls. He's got at least six wives at this point, and he just has this weakness in that area. He is in the wrong place at the wrong time with the right girl, and all sorts of things unfold from there. But it is ultimately a beautiful picture of redemption, restoration, the ugliness of sin, and how quickly it can be covered by the forgiveness of God.
David arrives at this moment through a transition — there is still a war going on. David is a warrior, and his people are warriors, mighty men. In chapter 10, the Ammonites have a new king, and David, in verse 2, makes a gesture of kindness toward him. He says he will be kind to this new king the way the king's father had shown kindness to him. He intends to reciprocate. So David sends his men on a mission of mercy, a mission of kindness.
The Ammonites, however, are paranoid about this. They go to their king and say in verse 3, "Has not David sent his servants to you to search the city, to spy it out, and to overthrow it?" They believe it is a plot. They think these men are on a reconnaissance mission — gathering information so David can come back and wipe them out. So the king takes David's servants, and in verse 4, he shaves off half their beards and cuts their garments up to their hips. There were no undergarments at this point in time, so what he has done is thoroughly humiliate and embarrass these men. It is a massive insult.
Word comes back to David that this has taken place. David tells the men in verse 5 to stay in Jericho, get themselves some clothing, let their beards grow back, and then come home. The sons of Ammon then realize in verse 6 that what they had done had become odious to David. They say, in effect, "We are in trouble now, because he was not coming to spy on us — but now he will come to get us." So they go out and hire Syrian mercenaries — the Arameans — and amass a mighty army.
Joab's Strategy and His Trust in God
David hears of this in verse 7 and sends out his commander Joab along with his army and his mighty men. In verse 8, we discover that Joab finds himself surrounded. Seeing this in verse 9, he selects his choicest men and sets them in array against the Arameans. His reasoning is that the Arameans are the strongest force, so his best men will engage them there — if they are beaten there, they are beaten entirely. He leaves the remainder of his forces with his brother to fight the Ammonites.
In verse 11, Joab tells his brother that in either case, he has his back. If Joab is in trouble, his brother will come support him; if his brother is in trouble, Joab will come support him. That is the scene. Then Joab utters these words in verse 12, and they are worth pausing on: "Be strong, and let us show ourselves courageous for the sake of our people and for the cities of our God; and may the Lord do what is good in His sight."
What Joab is saying is essentially this: we understand the situation, we have analyzed it, we have a strategic plan, we are going to implement that plan, and we are going to trust God with the results. That is contrary to how I tend to think, and maybe you do too. We live in a results-oriented world. I am a sports person — I read just enough to be semi-conversant and have completely unfounded opinions about everything, which is what it means to be a sports fan. Over the years I have done Bible studies and conferences with Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NBA, and others.
The NASCAR Mindset and God's View of Results
I have worked with all sorts of pros — college sports, all sorts of athletes. By far, one group stands out as the most unique of any I have encountered, and that is the NASCAR guys. These guys are totally different than any other group of athletes. Their whole mindset is absolutely different. With baseball or any other sport, there is a cross-pollination that takes place — the baseball guys follow golf, they follow football, they do all of that. The NASCAR guys are something else entirely.
I was in Hilton Head with them for a week. We were in South Carolina and North Carolina, the hotbed of basketball, and I would ask: do you follow basketball? No. What NFL team do you follow? No. NBA? No. What do you follow? NASCAR. Every Saturday morning when I did my study, every guy who came into the room stopped to look at the sheet showing the poll positions for the next day's race. All they cared about was the results.
That is the way I am too. Susan and I are boycotting the newspaper — but we have forgotten why. It has been so long we just know we are going to put it to the man; we are just not sure why anymore. So I do not see a newspaper very often, but every time I get one, I do exactly the same thing: I go straight to the sports section and look at the standings. Just the results. That is all that matters.
My daughter showed up today wearing an Iowa shirt, and I told her it takes a certain level of courage to wear that shirt based on yesterday's game. For those who do not follow these things, Iowa was a 24.5-point favorite and won the game 17–16 by blocking two field goals in the last seven seconds. She said, "Hey, Dad, it's a W." And she is exactly right. You lose that game and the season is in real jeopardy. But win it, and two weeks from now nobody is going to say the game was a mess — they are going to remember how exciting the ending was. That is how we are wired.
If you are a manager, what you want to know from your salespeople is: what have you sold? If you are running a restaurant, you hit a button at the end of the day and it tells you what the sales were — you match those up against labor costs and food costs and see what money you made. We are driven by the bottom line.
God Cares About the Process
God is exactly the opposite. We are driven by the bottom line, but God says, "I am in charge of the bottom line. It is the process I care about." We say just make the deal. God says no — it matters desperately how you make the deal. The process matters. It does not matter who wins or loses because He is going to take care of that. You throw the dice; He determines the outcome. He will bless who He is going to bless. He will bring rain where He is going to bring rain. He has all of that covered. What He is concerned about is your heart and your obedience.
He looks at things in a totally different way than we do. And Joab gets this. Joab, by the way, emerges to me as a pretty impressive figure the more I study this. He understands that we plan, we work — and the fact that God controls the outcome is not an excuse for us to be lazy. It is not an excuse to say, "Well, that is just the way it is." We work, we plan, we prepare, we execute, and then we trust God for the results. Joab gets that. Do you get it? Obedience over results. The process is important to God because He has the result covered.
The War With the Arameans
The war breaks out, and very quickly these people go out and take on the Arameans and just start to wipe them out. David finds out about this, the armies line up against each other, and in verse 19 comes the summation: the servants of the Arameans surrender unconditionally. They are afraid to go to the Ammonites — to what is now Amman, Jordan — and fight alongside them. They are done.
Then comes the season when the battles would subside. Armies did not fight in bad weather. But spring arrives in chapter 11, verse 1: *"It happened in the springtime, at the time when the kings go to battle."* So it is wartime — the time when kings are supposed to lead their armies. David sent Joab and his servants, along with all of Israel, out to fight the Ammonites.
David Stays Behind
Here is the key sentence — the last one of verse 1: *"But David stayed in Jerusalem."* The king should have been out with the men fighting. He should have been on the battlefield. But he decides not to go.
I made a list and came up with three possible reasons. First, he was simply tired. As best we can tell, David is now in his fifties, and he may have had decades of fighting — enough blood, enough warfare — and he is just worn out. I made a comment the other day that there is a real danger in having too much time to think, and there is also a sense in which certain things are a young person's game. It may be that David is feeling that.
The second reason I considered is more positive: perhaps he felt he could trust Joab, that his commander had things well in hand and did not need the king present on the field.
David's Absence from Battle
He had delegated authority, not wanting to be distracted by a lot of the details. That is not an excuse, but he was simply saying these men can handle this. It is just a cleanup job, spring cleaning against the enemy — no big deal. The third reason would be that he had become genuinely addicted to comfort. If you remember, we followed David for decades, going from cave to cave, sleeping on the ground, without many amenities at all. Now he is in the palace. He has servants. He has the best food. And he is thinking, I just do not want that hassle.
It is funny because I can relate to all three of these in my own life. I feel tired on one end, I feel completely comfortable that the leadership team here at East Valley Bible Church has everything under control, and I am somewhat addicted to comfort. I was reviewing the other day that several years ago I did 27 speaking engagements outside of Phoenix in a single year. That is every other week, plus Priority Living, plus the church. As a pastor I have done men's conferences all over.
Here is how those calls would go. They would call and ask if I was available on such and such a weekend. I would say maybe — what is the group, what is this about? Then they would ask what I charge, and I would say I never put up a number. If at the end of the time you feel you want to pay me, that is fine, and if you do not, that is fine too. Then they would ask if I had any specific needs, any dietary requirements.
No dietary needs — but I do have one specific need. I need to know the accommodations. I need to know the thread count of the sheets on the bed. So if they said it was up in Prescott, it did not matter what came next. I was just not available that weekend. I know that sounds elitist, but that is simply where I was. That might have been David's situation too. I can associate with him on any of these three levels.
The Danger of Prosperity
The problem is this: he is where he should not be. He is in the wrong place, at the wrong time, in a season of prosperity. Now, it amuses me how the application of this point has shifted over the 25 years I have been teaching it. Years ago I would point out that a man like David, in the midst of prosperity, is especially vulnerable — and most people in the room could relate to that. Right now most of us are struggling at some level, so that connection is harder to make.
But the point remains. Paul says to put on the full armor of God, and in the Greek that word means put on and leave on. We put on armor to go into battle — that makes sense. We take it off when the battle is over — also reasonable. But Paul is saying to put on the full armor of God and leave it on, because you are in battle twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
If I tell you right now that God is going to test you, or Satan is going to tempt you, or some hardship or difficulty is coming your way, you immediately think of a relationship falling apart, a spouse leaving, getting sick, losing something — something catastrophic. But we rarely think about the test that comes with prosperity and health. When I do not have my health, I do not have many decisions to make about what to do with my time. But when I am healthy, feeling good, and full of options, that is its own kind of test.
Thomas Carlyle, the historian, said that for every hundred people who can pass the test of adversity, there is only one who can pass the test of prosperity. David is in a good place right now — career success, blowing out all opposition. That is precisely the danger.
That is why a bumper sticker that says "God is my co-pilot" says so much. What it actually reveals is this: I am the pilot. I am the one flying the plane. I am the one in control. Periodically it gets scary and I hand it over, but as soon as we are out of the trouble, I take it right back. David is where he is not supposed to be, at a time he should not be there, and he is about to experience sin.
How Sin Works: James Chapter One
As I said, David is fifty-plus years of age, but he has this weakness with women. What is your thing? Because you never outgrow it — that is the lifelong struggle with sin. I want to give you a picture of what is about to happen, so keep your finger in 2 Samuel and go all the way to the end of the New Testament and work your way back — past Revelation, past First, Second, and Third John, past Second Peter — to the book of James. James is going to tell us exactly what happened here, and it is the same thing that happens in all of our lives, all of the time. This is how sin works.
James gives us a behind-the-scenes look. Here is what he says in James chapter one, verse 14: "But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. And when lust is conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death."
Let us define a couple of terms. When James uses the word lust, we immediately think sexual — and that is part of it. But it is any kind of feeling. It can be a completely good feeling that has simply gone awry, gone out of control. There is something internal that is attracted to something external, and these two things come together. James uses some vivid imagery here to show us exactly how that happens.
The Anatomy of Temptation
That is every one of us. When something happens, something inside of us is carried away. It is enticed. It is the idea of bait coming in front of us, something that lures an animal out of a place of safety — and then it happens. Something occurs to us internally when we come in contact with something externally. It pulls us away. Now, that is just temptation. There is no sin there.
Then this lust is conceived. You begin to act on it. It gives birth to sin. And when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death, brings forth destruction. That is the picture in all of our lives. We are going to look at David and his situation with Bathsheba, but this is what plays out in your life every day. It is the same thing.
We go all the way back to the garden. It is the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, boastful pride of life. It is something external that connects with something inside of us and pulls us away.
David on the Rooftop
Now let us go back to 2 Samuel, where you can see it work. Evening had come. David arose from his bed. He walked around the roof of the king's house, and from the roof he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful in appearance.
So David is strolling around. He is not supposed to be there — he is supposed to be out fighting with his men. He sees this woman, and as close as you can tell from the text, she is very beautiful in appearance. I love to say it is not in the text here, but I am convinced it was at this point that he said to one of his servants, "Give me the royal binoculars." So he gets the royal binoculars and he is looking, searching, focusing, and he sees that she is very beautiful in appearance. He looks for a while, and something external entices something internal.
The problem has still not fully arrived, but he says, "Go find out who that is." And the answer comes back: that is Bathsheba. And you have a couple of problems already, David. One, you should not be here. Two, you should not be pursuing anyone when you already have six wives. And you have yet another problem — she has a husband.
David says, essentially, go get her contact information, and we are going to meet. They do. She comes. She sleeps with him. Two consenting adults. But in verse five she says, "David, we have a little reminder of our encounter — I am pregnant."
Plan A: Send Uriah Home
David has not planned for this. He says, let me think about this, because I want to find a solution. He says in verse six, "Send Uriah the Hittite." So Joab sends Uriah to David.
We do not get the full picture from this passage alone, but at the end of this book, when David's mighty men and his top soldiers are listed — his top thirty fighting men — one of them is Uriah the Hittite. This man is a medal-of-honor-caliber warrior, the cream of the crop. And as we are about to discover, he is not just a great warrior — he is a man of enormous integrity.
So Uriah comes to David, and David asks in verse seven, "How is the battle going? What is happening out there?" Uriah tells him. Then David says, "Go down to your house and wash your feet." Uriah went out of the king's house, and a present from the king was sent after him. But Uriah slept at the door of the king's house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house.
Here was David's Plan A. You are home, you are a healthy man, you have been at war for a while. Clean yourself up and go visit your wife. Inevitably, one thing will lead to another. Then when it comes out that she is pregnant, you will assume it happened during your visit home. But Uriah has so much integrity that he will not do it. When men are out fighting, he will not go home to comfort himself.
Plan B: Grant Him Permission
Verse ten. When they told David that Uriah had not gone down to his house, David said, "You have come from a journey — why did you not go down to your house?" Plan B: I am giving you permission. Just go. Here is a letter if you need it. You are released. Go.
Uriah said to David, "The ark of Israel and Judah are staying in temporary shelters. My lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camped in the open field. Shall I then go to my house to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife?" He is saying, I cannot do that, David. And there is an implication in those words, is there not? The implication is clear: and you should not be at home either, David. You should be out there with us.
Plan C: Get Him Drunk
So David says, "Stay here today, and tomorrow I will let you go." Uriah remained in Jerusalem. The next day, verse thirteen, David called him and they ate and drank, and David got him drunk. David's reasoning was that even a disciplined man will break under enough wine, and then he will go home to his wife. But even drunk, Uriah did not go and lie with her. He did not go to his own house.
Plans A, B, and C had all failed.
The Death Sentence
David made his final decision. He wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah himself. Uriah hand-delivered what was, in essence, his own death sentence. David had written in the letter, verse fifteen, "Place Uriah in the front of the fiercest battle, then withdraw from him so that he may be struck down and die."
And so it was. As Joab watched the city, he put Uriah in the place where he knew the valiant men were. The men of the city went out and fought against Joab, and some of the people among David's servants fell. And Uriah the Hittite died. Then Joab sent a full report of all the events back to David.
David's Cover-Up Completed
When you finish telling all the events of the war to the king, if it happens that the king's wrath rises against you and he says to you, "Why did you go so near to the city? Did you not know that they would shoot from the wall?"— if he says this to you, you simply say, as verse 21 concludes, "Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead."
So the messenger departed and came and reported to David all that Joab had told him. The messenger said to David, "The men prevailed against us. They came out against us from the field. They pressed us as far as the entrance. Moreover, the archers shot your servants from the wall, so that some of the king's servants are dead. And your servant Uriah the Hittite is also dead." That is what David wants. David has eyes for Bathsheba, and this is how he gets there — he eliminates Uriah. David essentially sends word back to Joab that war is hell and these things happen.
Then, when the wife of Uriah the Hittite heard this, she went into mourning. Verse 27 tells us that when the time of mourning was over, David sent for her, brought her in, she became his wife, and she bore him a son. Everything appears to be taken care of. But just as chapter 11 opened with the sentence "David stayed in Jerusalem," the chapter closes with a sentence: "But the thing David had done was evil in the sight of the Lord." His sin was not ultimately against Bathsheba, against Uriah the Hittite, against Joab, or against anyone else — his sin was against God.
Nathan's Confrontation
So God sends a messenger. In chapter 12, Nathan comes to David and tells him a story about two men — a rich one and a poor one. The rich man has many flocks. The poor man has what verse 3 identifies as one little ewe lamb, which he treated like a pet and cared for tenderly. When it came time for a feast, the rich man took the poor man's lamb and slaughtered it and devoured it.
David's anger, verse 5 tells us, burns greatly against the man. He says to Nathan, "As surely as the Lord lives, the man who has done this thing deserves to die." Now there was an appropriate legal penalty for taking another man's sheep — restitution of four. But David goes far beyond that in righteous indignation. He says this man deserves death. David becomes suddenly very angry and very judgmental.
So often that happens in our own lives. David sees this injustice, and it is really his own sin. That is exactly what Nathan says to him: "David, you are this man." We are told to be careful when we judge, not to judge too quickly, to take the log out of our own eye before we pick the speck out of someone else's. The speck, after all, is a piece of the same material as the log in your own eye. So often when something drives you absolutely to distraction in another person — their pride, their arrogance — what you are seeing is nothing more than a reflection of what is in you. It is so often the very thing present in our own lives that drives us to fury when we see it in someone else.
David has that moment. He rises up — there must be justice, there must be judgment, there is a penalty here — and Nathan says, "It is you."
Three Things Nathan's Message Does
Nathan's message, which is a message from God, does three things. Look at verse 7. First, he revisits the history of the relationship. "I appointed you king of Israel. I anointed you king. I delivered you. I gave you your master's house. I gave you your master's wives." Remember all of these things, David. Remember all that has been done. Remember who you are. Remember the grace and the mercy that have been extended to you.
Then, having established all of that, Nathan asks in verse 9: "Why have you despised the Lord? Why have you done this? Why have you struck down Uriah? Why have you taken his wife as your wife and had him killed by the sword of the Ammonites?" And therefore, Nathan declares, the sword will never depart from your house. There is judgment. There is consequence. We will look at some of that consequence.
David's Response and the Heart of the Matter
But I want to look at verse 13. As I have taught through First and Second Samuel, I have told people it is really hard to have a deep respect for David until you step back and realize that David is just like us. You hear "a man after God's own heart" and you expect extraordinary things from him consistently. Then you see failure after failure after failure. How can this be a man after God's own heart?
I think the answer is in verse 13. When Nathan confronts him, David does not make excuses. He does not go find a lawyer to plead his case. He does not try to cop a plea. He simply says, "I did it. I have sinned. I have sinned against you, God." And immediately — and these are the words I think he desperately needed to hear — Nathan says, "The Lord has taken away your sin."
Our instinct is to be really hard on David, or on people like David, or on people when they sin. That is how we are wired.
Judging Ourselves vs. Judging Others
Our instinct is to judge ourselves by our intention and to judge others by their actions. I might be engaged in something that doesn't work out and say, well, that wasn't what I intended. That wasn't the plan. But when I see the same thing in others, I never climb into their skin to try to understand that there may be a reason for that very thing. Not to excuse things away — I'm not even talking about sin here — just some sort of behavior, some sort of attitude. I never cut anybody else that slack.
I don't want to get away from everything else here, but I want to stay on the grace of this and the forgiveness that God extends to us. That is not in any way to excuse David. It makes me sick that we have to offer that explanation every time, but I know we do. The minute we start talking about grace, it becomes dangerous, because all of a sudden it sounds like we're not dealing with sin. That's not true. But we ought to at least have the mercy, the sensitivity, and the grace that God has.
Psalm 51: David's Cry of Repentance
David is confronted with his sin, and the moment Nathan speaks, David owns it immediately. Turn with me to Psalm 51. The heading in my Bible reads: "A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came to him after he had gone in to Bathsheba." Here David cries out and expresses a total, complete understanding of himself, of his sin, and of God's mercy. He understands his own weakness.
Back in 2 Samuel there was a point where they were talking about sacrifices, and God said, I don't need your sacrifices, I don't need your religion — I need this intimate, personal relationship. David writes in keeping with that spirit: "Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your loving kindness; according to the greatness of Your compassion, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me."
I love that David says: I get the sin part. I understand how serious this really is. I absolutely get it. I can't get away from it. God, cleanse me from it. That is what David is banking on — and it connects to what Tim talked about last week, about David representing Christ by extending kindness to the last of Saul's descendants. He extended grace and mercy to a poor, crippled orphan who was totally dependent, intimidated by the king, expecting the king to wipe him out. And David extended not judgment but grace: come dine with me, stay with me, live with me, stay under my protection. That is what God does for us.
Grace That Sustains, Not Only Saves
This is so important, and my fear is that we miss it. It is not just grace to get us into the kingdom of God. It is not just the grace to save us. It is the grace to sustain us — the grace I need day after day. We don't need a show of hands, but my suspicion is that at some level, everybody in this room, to some degree, has sinned this week. And we may look at it and say, well, it's nothing like David and Bathsheba. But it is still a sin against God. How do we respond to that?
Why do I become cavalier and say, well, boys will be boys, that's just the way it is? No, that's no good. But do I become filled with despair and depression and remorse? No. I go to Him and I say, I want You to wash me. I want You to cleanse me. This is before me. I get it.
The Depth of Sin and the Need for a Clean Heart
How deep does this sin go? Verse five: "I was brought forth in iniquity." I came into the world a sinner from the very beginning. It is my nature. It is who I am. "Purify me" — verse seven — "wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness, let the bones which You have broken rejoice. Hide Your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities."
Here is what I need, God: create in me a clean heart, a broken and a contrite spirit. Verse 17: "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart." That is what I want, God — for You to do a work in me, something powerful in me. I have a disease. It is a heart disease. Even with my new heart, I still sin. God, I hate it, but I still do it. And I know it offends You.
Look at verse 12: "Restore to me the joy of Your salvation." This sin is eating me alive, God, and the only thing that can deliver me from it is You — knowing that You have forgiven me and that You create a clean heart in me.
The Gospel Illuminated Through Failure
One author writes this: "It is through this account of failure that the gospel of the Messiah is illuminated for us. It reminds us of how central Christ's sacrifice on the cross is to our faith — not only as an act which has secured our acceptance before God, but as an act that opens a way of life, of holiness and purity. It is sin that makes the sacrifice of Christ necessary, but it is the sacrifice that breaks the power of sin over us." This is the sacrifice that breaks that bondage. We have been set free — free indeed. Free from what? Free from this sin. Free for what? Free to be His. Real freedom. Not adolescent freedom.
I read a book early in the summer that I loved, and so I was doing a little research on the author — and I discovered there was some sin in the author's life. I had already given the book to a friend to read, and when I gave it to him he said, I know this guy's name somehow.
Adolescent Freedom vs. Mature Freedom
We are so hard on each other and so judgmental, and I can be at the top of that list. The minute we talk about freedom or grace, we begin to talk about license. But one writer draws a distinction between what he calls adolescent freedom and mature freedom. Adolescent freedom only asks, "What am I free from?" Mature freedom asks, "What am I free for?"
Adolescent freedom asks what is forbidden. Mature freedom asks what is helpful. Adolescent freedom embraces the liberty to do my own thing, but mature freedom embraces the liberty to do Christ's thing. Adolescent freedom often confuses legalism and obedience, while mature freedom understands the difference. Mature freedom not only understands the exhilaration of being free from the wrong master, but the greater exhilaration of being enslaved to the right master.
Mature freedom recognizes both being free and being a servant. As Martin Luther says, a Christian is both a perfectly free lord of all and a perfectly dutiful servant of all. Our freedom, rightly understood, is freedom to truly love.
Grace, Change, and Hope
I was walking on the beach and had this thought, and as I share it with you, you're going to say, "Really? It took you that long to figure this out?" And I'll say, yes, I'm not that smart. Reflecting back on the last election, there were two words that emerged as lynchpin words. Those two words were "change" and "hope."
People said they wanted hope for the future, and that it required change. I buy that thought process. I want hope. I want a bright future. Watching all of the Teddy Kennedy memorials, all of it was about the hope of the future — that Teddy is now with his mother Rose and his brother Joe, and all of that pointed toward what is ahead.
Here is what I understand. I understand that I am not going to get there on my own. I have this thing called sin that is in the way, so I need change to get to this hope. But here is the word that precedes and causes that change: grace. It is the grace that God works in our hearts. It is the grace that God brings to create a new heart, to cleanse us, to give us a broken spirit — because we do not have that on our own.
When that happens, a change takes place. My heart of stone becomes a heart of flesh. My destination, my destiny — everything changes. And now I have hope for the future.
The Hope We Have in Scripture
Romans 15:13 says, "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." That word "hope" means the joyful, confident expectation of an eternal salvation. That is the hope we have.
When we are talking about death, 1 Thessalonians 4:13 says, "We do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you will not grieve as those who have no hope." But we have hope. First Timothy 4:10 says, "For we labor and strive for this because we have fixed our hope on the living God, Jesus Christ."
Grace for the Here and Now
Because of this grace, it is not just that I have hope for the sweet by and by. It is that I have hope and grace for right here, right now. I need that grace in my life, and I need to extend that grace to others as well. It is the forgiveness that I find in Him. It is the joy that I find in Him.
Why isn't there more joy in the Christian life? I think it is because we have not linked these three words together. The grace that brings change — not just before salvation, but after it — leads to a change in my life that gives me hope, in spite of all the other things around me.
Looking Ahead
Next week we will pick up where we leave off today. Nathan went to his house, and then the Lord struck the child that Uriah's wife bore to David, so that he was very sick. We will look at that passage together next week.
Father, thank You for the grace You bring into our lives — the grace that allows us to change, causes us to change, and produces hope. A hope that is not wishful thinking, not positive mental attitude, but the reality that we are now headed for heaven. God, we pray that You would make in us a clean heart, a broken and contrite spirit, that we would love You. God, as we sin, may we be like David — may we confess it, and understand that our sin is against You. God, I thank You for the model that we have. Amen.
A Closing Prayer
In David, God did not put together a story of a man with no problems and no sin. We see him, as we say, warts and all. God, thank you for that, because in it we find hope. God, thank you for Jesus. We pray to you in His name. Amen. Have a great week. We will see you next week.