40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Samuel 12:1-15 (Episode 271)

Episode Date: June 21, 2021

God sends the prophet Nathan to confront David about his sin. Nathan tells a story about a poor man and a lamb and David condemns himself in his reaction. Sin is admitted and forgiveness is given in one of the great pictures of confession and absolution in the scriptures. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. 1517 Podcast Network Regional Event in Las Vegas 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome back to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. and while you're over there check out the events page and go and sign up for the here we still stand regional event in las vegas nevada it's october 15th and 16th two-day event you want to hang out with chad me flame eric sorenson scott keith gretchen ronovic michael berg steven paulson kelsey klumbara caleb keith sarah crowder i mean it just goes on and on you want to come hang out

with us it's only 65 bucks and that includes your lunch on saturday so you got to come it's uh it's what we're doing this year. Hopefully next year we'll be back out in San Diego, but this year we did the NWA regional event, and we are doing a Las Vegas regional event. So if you were planning on going to California, just reroute your plans and head over to Vegas instead. Also, if you haven't checked out the new podcast that Chad and Eric and I have dropped called A Fuel Guide to the Bible, you might want to check that out. The whole Old Testament portion of that is out. It's 16 episodes. We kind of do a complete overview of the entire Old Testament in 16 episodes. They're about 25 or 30 minutes apiece. And yeah, it's a good refresher. And if you're not real familiar

with the Bible, it's great. If you are familiar with the Bible and you just kind of want to speed through and get the grand narrative of redemption in the Old Testament, it's a great way to do it. It's a field guide to the Bible. You can check that out on wherever you listen to podcasts. all right chad last episode we got the the entire story of uh of what david did it took us it took us two episodes to get through it all encounter with that bathsheba is her ending up pregnant him trying to get uriah to go and sleep with his wife so he can get it covered up uriah being too noble for such actions and david deciding that he will put together a plan uh to have uriah be killed in battle joe i'm not thinking that plan is going to work doing a different plan uriah ends

up dead at the end of it and uh and david takes bathsheba to be his wife and we ended with these sort of uh ominous words that all of this everything that i just described was evil in the sight of the lord and so what is it that the lord is going to do about it well the lord does what he usually does he sends a preacher yeah right yeah he uh he likes to send preachers uh for lots of different reasons. We need a preacher of the kind that Nathan is to call us to repentance, because as we all know, it's pretty easy for us to either excuse our actions or justify our actions or attempt to forget about our actions. All those are different ways in which sinners deal with their sin. And that's one of the reasons why we need other people. Neither a preacher,

like an actual preacher or at least somebody in our life to come along and say hey let me tell you a story yeah or or let or just confront us and say hey what you did that was wrong that was that was that was not right so we need that we need those kind of people who either tell us a story like Nathan is going to tell David or just confront us outright and say listen man you know what you did, that was not cool. That was wrong. And usually our reaction to that is going to be either, you know, we, we maybe, maybe we try and, and say, well, you know, it wasn't as bad as you think, or it really wasn't right. Or we try and excuse or justify ourselves. However, at least in my experience, even if we initially react that way, the words from that preacher, the goddess

sent into our life, don't go away. We still remember them. And then hopefully what happens over time is that they actually do the work and they bring us to that point of repentance ideally it happens right away yeah and you're gonna see well you will see consequences for david's actions but you also see a lot of mercy uh in this as well because i mean just in the opening line of of chapter 12 you have and the lord sent nathan to david this is an act of of mercy this is i mean this is a gracious act by god because what you could read uh is that and then god struck david dead i mean you know you look at how saul was dealt with when he did some when god told him to do some stuff and he didn't he didn't follow it just exactly right

just got you know he got it a little bit wrong uh well i mean i think we could argue that what's going on here is way worse than anything that Saul did, as far as to displease God. And so, you know, you do have this sort of, God has made a promise regarding a seed, and so for the sake of his promise, for the sake of his own word, he is going to be merciful to David, while there's still be in consequences. God is going to actually use all of this to bring about his promise. This might be one of the premier story in the Bible about where you see Paul's words, God works all things together for good, play out. And those things that he works out are bad things. I've said this a lot of times, but God working good things together for good is no special feat.

this is that's whatever like hey i i worked out uh you getting a raise for good you're like yeah well congratulations i don't you don't need to be god to do that paul is necessarily talking about the bad things that you can read that as god works bad things together for good and i think that this story and what's going to happen throughout this story is maybe the best example of god saying yeah this is all evil in my sight but i made a promise and i'm going to even take what is evil in my sight, and it's going to play a role in me fulfilling and keeping my promises. Yeah, Romans 8, 28, that verse you're quoting, I mean, it should have like at least three texts that are cited as like a footnote, like a cross-reference. One of those should be the

whole story in the latter part of Genesis about Joseph and his brothers. I mean, Joseph says that explicitly, right? You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. The second reference should be second samuel 11 and 12 that we're looking at now and of course the third and the the ultimate reference should be the gospels yeah the crucifixion resurrection of christ those are if you want to to to pull some examples well then those three are definitely at the at the top you know so god sends nathan to to david to call him to repentance and the second reason that we we need preachers is because of what nathan will later say to david that the lord has taken away your sin. So that word of forgiveness in the mouth of a preacher is always stronger than any

forgiveness that we might speak within our hearts, as Bonhoeffer once wrote. So we begin with this word sent again. I've pointed that out a couple times. This is a characteristic word that we find in the 11. Everybody's sending people here and there, and so God is going to do some sending of his own. And he sends Nathan to David. So Nathan, I guess, I mean, theoretically, he has some options, right? We're not told necessarily that these are the exact words that God told Nathan to say to David. Maybe this is one of these cases where the prophet in his wisdom and in his God-given inspiration knows exactly what to do. But whatever the case may be, this is exactly what Nathan decides to do, the approach he decides to take. He doesn't walk in

kind of a, you know, Jonathan Edwards style preaching that you, O King, are in the hands of an angry God. There's no, not even any kind of John the Baptist repent language. Instead, goes about it in a way which I assume is necessary for this particular sinner. By that, I mean that given as much time has passed, given what he knows about David, that this is going to be the best way to find the chink in David's armor and to get in and to make him realize exactly what he's done. so let me just read through the it's a pretty short parable it's only about uh i guess four verses something like that read through it and then there's there's a lot within this particular story that is worth pausing and reflecting on so nathan says to david 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. He used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms or literally lie in his bosom 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 would come to him. But he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him. So that's the story. So one of the things that at least is most obvious, just kind of on the surface of the connections between this parable and everything that's been happening

before it, is some of the language. So if you look, for instance, at verse three, as Nathan is describing this scenario where, you know, which of course David assumes is a real life situation. So David is listening to this. He's thinking that Nathan is telling him about this situation in his kingdom and that David is going to need to address this because David is kind of the Supreme court, we might say of the land. And so he's telling him this particular parable as if it's an actual story. Now it's, and maybe it's because we know, but when you're listening to this, I don't know about you, Dan, but when I'm listening to it, it's kind of like, ah, it seems a little bit out there. I mean, it seems a little extravagant, a particular story for, like, I guess what I'm saying is,

how could David not have seen that this was not an actual, actual account? Well, here's the brilliance of the parable, the story that he's telling him, is that Nathan knows that he's talking to a shepherd. Yeah. And so he's, I mean, this sheep thing is not an accident. So he's going all the way back to where David came from. He's like, hey, I've got a problem. Here's something that you would never know about

because you're the king unless I came and told you, but really bothered me that this event occurred. And it involves a poor man with just one sheep that he cares for. I mean, he's got, he's going. David's attention at that yeah he's going right to things that you know that David identifies with uh and you're going to see that it was brilliant and I think that I think that that that's the reason sort of the the obvious nature of what to us as a reader is I think it gets covered up

in the tugging at David's identity that Nathan does here because it does seem that David doesn't catch on that this is not true and instead is completely enraged uh which is the brilliance of nathan's story because i mean the reason that david is so enraged is not just that oh there was a rich man that treated a poor man unjustly well i mean he could spend the rest of his life taking care of that uh that's that's going on everywhere there it's it's what actually happened uh in this story and involving a guy who was looking and caring for one lone sheep and this guy comes out david and david just can't have this and of course i mean it works beautifully because the hypocrisy of david's outrage is exactly what nathan's trying to get yeah well and i don't want

to get too far too far ahead of ourselves but yeah part of that hypocrisy is that he is enraged over what happened to a single lamb while at the same time seemingly oblivious to the outrageous actions that he himself has performed against multiple people.

Yeah, I was just saying, contrast, this guy took this guy's lamb, he really loved this lamb, and he butchered it and he served it to his rich friend. Now granted, you're like, this guy's terrible, right? Right, right, right.

David just told Joab, sometimes people die in battle. That's what he told him. When Joab's like, hey, yeah, I mean, it costs a lot of lives to get Uriah dead. And David's like, it is what it is. When you go to war, sometimes you die. People die, yeah. It's quite a study, I mean, apart from the whole theology, it's quite a study in human psychology, what's going on with him.

Yeah, but this was the perfect story to make up for Nathan. I mean, he's got, he knew, he knew what he was doing. Yeah. So, uh, looking at some of the details in this, uh, this particular story, notice for instance, in verse three, when Nathan's describing how close this guy was to this one little ewe lamb, he says that the animal would eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and line his arms. Now, if you, if you go back into the previous chapter when david is trying to get uriah to go home one of them went and uriah we have this one little speech of uriah in uriah's speech he basically uses these same three words he's like how can i go and eat and drink and lie with my wife so those those those three hebrew verbs of

eat and drink and lie are the exact same ones that are in the mouth earlier of uriah so i mean i'm not saying that Nathan knew that, but the fact that the narrator has put these in here the way that he has is remarkable. And here's something else that is, I think, in almost every English translation. I didn't check a number of them, but at least I looked at a few of them, and I didn't see this present in any of them, but there's a play on words here on Nathan and David's part. So Nathan says there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling, is the word that's translated there, unwilling to take one of his own flock. Now, when David hears the story, he's going to become outraged because this man had no

pity. Now, in Hebrew, the word unwilling and pity are exactly the same. so one robert alter whose translation i'll often use uh has translated it something like this something like uh i don't have it in front of me so i can't quote a word for it but something like he he considered it a pity to take from his own flock or herd so he took for somebody else and then you have that same word occurring at the end where david says he had no pity so that's another one of the things that's going on here. Verse 5, he took the poor man's lamb. In Hebrew, that's lakach. That's the same word that we found with David taking Bathsheba and bringing her into

his house. There's a whole lot of things that are going on here that are just perfect with regard to the parable itself, even down to that the lamb was like a daughter to him. In Hebrew, the word for daughter is bat looks like bath b-a-t-h and that is the first part of bathsheba's name so bathsheba bat sheva means daughter of sheva so the very fact that he's calling this lamb a daughter a bot is a play off of bathsheba's name but of course you you get the the parable of course, is not an exact following of the events that transpired, because, of course, in this particular story, it's the lamb who is killed. But in the previous chapter, it wasn't the lamb. In fact, it was Uriah himself who was killed. This is the nature of parables. They're not,

parables aren't exact. They're stories that tell you about something and reveal something greater than the story itself yeah yeah so i mean we can make the same mistake with this parable as as people can make with many of the parables in the new testament sort of over allegorize them if you will try and see you know make every single detail in the parable correspond to something some theological reality or truth and it i mean there's elements of that you can see that when jesus interprets for himself the parable of the sower. There's a lot of, of course, details in that parable that correspond to various meanings, but generally speaking, the parable is going to flow in this one direction to bring across this

one main message, and that's, of course, what we have here. So what happens? Nathan tells this parable, verse 5, David's anger was greatly kindled against the man. And he said to Nathan, As the Lord lives, the man who has done this literally is a son of death, deserves to die. And he shall restore the lamb fourfold because he did this thing and because he had no pity. There's that word for pity that I mentioned earlier. Now, one of the things that is interesting is this language of son of death, because this is the third time we've heard this in the books of Samuel. earlier and there's two occurrences in first samuel one is where i believe it's saul speaking

to jonathan that says that david is the son of death meaning that he deserves to die and then later when david is speaking to saul's general he sir he says that he deserves to die because he wasn't protecting saul when david went down with the bend of steel the spear and now this second occasion, we have the phrase in David's mouth, except in this occasion, it refers to, as we'll find out, refers to himself, this parabolic man that he's talking about. Also, when he talks about restoring the lamb fourfold, there's a lot of Jewish commentators, as well as others, who look at the ramifications of David's actions and point out that there was sort of a fourfold punishment or fourfold ramification that resulted from this. David is actually quoting or referencing

Exodus 22.1, where it says that someone who steals sheep must restore that fourfold. But if you look at what happens after this incident, you've got, depending on how you count, you've got four sons that are dead in one way or another as a result of David's actions. One of these is the son, the infant son of Bathsheba, which we'll hear about soon. And then you have in the chapters that are coming up, you have the murder of Amnon by Absalom. And then you've got Absalom himself, who dies on the battlefield after he stages a coup against his father. And then in First Kings, you have Adonijah. So there's four sons, kind of a fourfold death that results from this. Or you can count it differently. You can count three of those. And then you can also count the

violent treatment of Tamar as she is raped by her half-brother. But either way, however you want to count this, there is sort of a fourfold payment, we might say, that results from what David has done in his theft of Bathsheba. Now, up to this point, these first six verses, we've had the Hebrew word ish occur six times. So we have a rich, there were two men, and then we have them referenced as a rich man and a poor man. And now David says, as the Lord lives, this man who has done this deserves to die. Now the seventh occurrence, the climactic occurrence of man is about to come out of Nathan's mouth. After the eruption of David, after he's so upset about everything that's been told him and how he says this man deserves to die.

Nathan turns around and says to David, Atah Ha'ish in Hebrew, you are the man. It's one of these two-word sentences that are structurally part of this whole story. We had one in chapter 11. In Hebrew, it's two words when Bathsheba sends a message to David and says, I am pregnant. here we have two words in hebrew atahaish you are the man and then later when david when david

responds to nathan he uses two words and he says i have sinned against the lord so we have bathsheba speaking two words we have nathan speaking two words we have david speaking two words i am pregnant you are the man and i have sinned against the lord so of course this is nathan's way of opening the curtain, as it were, and showing David that he, in fact, is the very one against whom he has just pronounced judgment. Yeah, I mean, you are the man are like some devastating words right there. I mean, and, you know, I mean, Nathan's going to go on to say some things after this about everything that God has done for David and all this stuff, but i think it's those these these words you are the man uh this i mean this is the full weight of the

law coming down on david right here yeah everything that is said after that is probably anticlimactic because you know as soon as those two words came out of nathan's mouth you are the man everything like the scales fell from david's eyes yeah if you will or the the armor from his heart or whatever image you want to use, it was gone. And in that moment was the epiphany to David that, yeah, he is the man. He is the one who has done exactly what Nathan described in the parable, and he is the one against whom the judgment should be pronounced. And isn't it amazing that God agrees with David?

David knows what's going on. David says, this man deserves to die. God would agree with that. God has said before that such a man would deserve to die. Yet instead, he sends a preacher so that David can repent and live. Yeah, that gets to the heart of what confession is. Every time we confess our sins, we basically say, I deserve to die. In my particular tradition, when we confess our sins corporately every Sunday morning, and we say, I have sinned against you and thought word and deed by what i have done and why by what i have left undone i have allowed you with my whole heart i

haven't loved my neighbor as myself i justly deserve your temporal and eternal punishment so we say that every sunday that i deserve basically what we're saying is basically i deserve to die i deserve your temporal and eternal punishment this is our way not of sort of telling god something he doesn't already know but admitting what is just true Yeah, it's acknowledging that you deserve death, and then you follow that up with, but, for the sake of Christ, have mercy on me instead, right? So you acknowledge what you deserve, and then you ask for something different for the sake of another. Yeah, it's an emphatic declaration week after week of what mercy is. Mercy is not getting what you deserve.

We are verbally saying, okay, we deserve this, but God responds with, I forgive you. I do have mercy because that's the kind of God that I am. It's one of the great comforting aspects of confession is that we say what is true about ourselves, I'm a sinner, I deserve to die. And then God turns around and he says something which is even truer, that I have sent my son, i've sent the son of david to die in your stead and for his sake i forgive you all your all your sins yeah i mean only sinners can repent and so the to repent requires that you acknowledge that you're a sinner that's the repentance is you know is acknowledging your sin turning from sin to the

forgiveness of sins to the mercies of god only sinners can do this and so uh david has to come face-to-face with his sin, acknowledge his sin, so that God can bring him into the forgiveness of that sin, which is what we're going to see happen. Yeah, and it's not as if confession is somehow a good deed in the sense of we are performing some great holy act. We're just saying, as I mentioned earlier, we're saying what's true. No, and I mean, you see right here, I mean, Nathan is a gift to David. I mean, God doesn't have to send Nathan. He could just strike him dead and be done with it, but he doesn't. He sends him Nathan. Nathan is a as devastating as these words, you are the man, are, this is a gift. This is mercy to David,

because God is using Nathan to bring him, to grant him repentance. Yeah, what would be truly worse would be if God had not sent Nathan, but basically left David to go down the same path that he was going down. Yeah, maybe God's just like, I'm just going to ignore it because I made a promise, and David can just continue being all hard-hearted and thinking he got away with this, and that it's not a big deal. No, God's not going to do that. He wants David to know exactly how big a deal this is, but God also uses it to display his mercy. Yeah. So let's go on. Verse 7 is where we have you're the man, and then we have the rest of Nathan's words to David. Thus says the Lord God of israel i anointed you king over israel and i delivered you out of the hand of saul

and it kind of was that particular order right he anoints him by the prophet and then he delivered him out of the hand of saul notice all the eyes in here too by the way these are all god speaking here's what i did i anointed you i delivered you and he goes on i gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your arms uh in in hebrew by the way that into your arms literally into your bosom that's the same phrase that was used in the parable about how the lamb would be in his arms or in his bosom we're not told about this outside of this particular section by the way i gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your arms there's no record whatsoever of Saul's, we're assuming this is Saul, Saul's wives coming to David, but that's what God

says through the prophet. So, I gave you your master's house, your master's wives in your arms, and I gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. So, the point is clear, right? There's all these things that God has done for David. I anointed you. I delivered you. I gave you this. I gave you that. And you know what? If that wasn't enough, I would have given you more. So it's not like I've been stingy or it's not like I've just kind of been withholding things from you. What you see is God's about to say, here's what I did. You know, it's all this stuff. And now he's about to say, and here's what you, and here's what you did in return. Yeah. Here's how you respond to that. Verse nine, he puts it

the form of a question. Why have you despised the word of the Lord to do what is evil in his sight? And then he begins to list these out. You've 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. Thus says the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house, and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor,

and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this son. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the son. so I mean you of course you have everything listed here that David has done he he struck down Uriah the Hittite with a sword and then it's specified with the sword of the Ammonites but there's no sort of diminishing of what David has done it's not like David didn't commit murder just because he happened to die on the battlefield just because Uriah happened to die on the battlefield it's like hiring a hitman like you could charge with murder for that yeah it's just because you didn't pull the trigger doesn't mean that you are are not the are not the murderer so

this isn't going to be like reduced down to manslaughter or second degree murder this is first degree all the way so you've struck him down and you've taken his wife to be to be your wife and then almost an echo of david's words about the sword never departing from your house it's sort of echo what david said earlier this well the sword devours one as well as the other on this case the sword is going to turn and its uh ravenous mouth is going to come after david's own house, because you have despised me and have taken Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. And that's sort of part of what we see at the end of the last chapter. It talks about Bathsheba lamenting the death of Uriah and then David taking her to be his

wife, and then it says, you know, all of this was evil in the sight of the Lord. The taking of Bathsheba is part of that. You see it there, and then you see it again here. Now, it's not as though, I mean, at this point, God's not going to say, you know, send her away or something like that because i mean you after all you just murdered her husband i mean so that would that wouldn't help her any that was part of what displeased god he was not a fan of david after doing all these things being like all right cool i'll go ahead and take her take her as my wife as well yeah but it's as if there were no repercussions whatsoever for david he got to have

everything that he wanted he seemingly got off scot-free he was able to not only have the affair of Bathsheba, but also to marry her. And so, yeah, that was kind of the final act of David in this whole list of sins that he committed against the Lord. And then we have a prophecy beginning in verse 11 and then continuing through 12. It's something that we're going to see played out in the rest of the book. This is going to be, of course, this is vague now. He talks about how he's going to raise up evil against your house out of your own house rather and he's going to take david's wise and give them to quote your neighbor so there's a very unspecified kind of language here which of course is on purpose because david is not going to know how or when or

this is going to happen or who's going to do it we know of course because we read the story it's going to be absalom who is going to well not just absalom there's going to be problems of course with Amnon as well, which leads to problems with Absalom. So we'll be covering all that in the chapters that are there on the horizon. Now, God has said a lot. He's spoken the parable through David, I mean through Nathan. He has continued with these very heavy words of judgment from the mouth of the prophet. And now David is about to respond. And this is that two-word response that I referred to earlier, David says to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. So six words in English, two words in Hebrew, I have sinned against the Lord. And what does Nathan say?

Nathan says, 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 was born to you shall die. Then Nathan went to his house. Yeah, this confession of David is simple, and he dares no—well, let me explain to you exactly what happened here. Yeah, well, there were extenuating circumstances. I got caught up in it, man. I realized I really messed up here. This really got—this spiraled out of control. I don't I don't know what I was thinking. None of that. He just says, I have sinned against the Lord.

And immediately, I mean, Nathan says, the Lord also has put away your sin, and you shall not die. I mean, this is as good a news as you can get. Now, you can get some bad news that the child is going to die and that there was consequences to this. And by the way, I mean, anyone who doesn't understand that there's, like, horizontal consequences for sin, I mean, anyone who's a sinner knows that this is the way that goes. But still, this message to David from Nathan is that the Lord has taken away the ultimate consequence of his sin, which is death. What God is doing is saying that when David says that this person is a son of death, who

has done this in the story that was given to him, God agrees that David deserves to die, but has taken away his sin, so therefore David won't die. And the only reason that David is not going to die and that God can take away his sin is because the son of David is going to come and take David's sin upon himself. These devastating words, you are the man. If you go to John chapter 19, you see these words from Pilate. This is in John 19, 5, and it says, so jesus on trial and says so jesus came out wearing a crown of thorns and a purple robe

and pilot said to them being the the crowd of people and the pharisees behold the man and when the priest and the officers saw that saw him they cried out crucify him this is the reason that david is is able to have his sin put away after being told that he is the man is because when Jesus comes out wearing a purple robe, which is a mockery of being a king and has a crown of thorns placed on his head. And Pilate says, behold, the man, this is Jesus taking on David's sin. So you are the man, but Jesus is going to become the man. And that's why Nathan can say he has put away your sin. Yeah, I don't think I could say it any better than better than that.

And as if this was all set up this morning, not making this up this morning. I was reading John chapter 19 because it's part of my regular reading schedule. And I read those very words this morning, not, not like on purpose to prepare for the podcast, just because that was where I was at. And I paused, when I was reading through that verse, just kind of taking it in, what that would have been like. Yeah. Behold the man. And at that time it didn't even, it didn't even cross my mind.

We'll be looking at this, this, this morning, but it's a perfect fit. and you're exactly right that's a reason that that nathan can say what what he says well it's a reason that anybody can say to us uh you are forgiven the lord has put away your sin that's because of what the son of son of david has done and i love the fact too just to reinforce what we're already saying is that these words convey the gift it's not as if it's the absolution is never a wish in other words may the lord put away your sin or i pray that the lord will put away your sin or I hope, I will pray to the Lord that he may put away your sin.

No, it's a declarative reality. I mean, David doesn't even ask for it. He just says, he just acknowledges it. So he acknowledges that he has sinned against the Lord and bam, immediately Nathan says, but the Lord has put away your sin. David doesn't say, what do I need to do? Is there some way I can make up for this?

None of that. Just the announcement that I am a sinner and then the preacher comes in and says, well, I've got news about that too. Yeah, there's really no better example of, I mean, I know there's more to the story, but there's really no better example in the scriptures, I think, of what confession absolutely truly is. The sinner says, I have sinned against the Lord. And the preacher says, the Lord has put away your sin. You shall not die. Yeah. The sinner tells the truth about himself or herself. And then the Lord, through a human agent,

turns around and says, your sin is forgiven. It has been removed. And as you said, Dan, I mean, we all know, uh, some of us, most of us probably painfully well know that sins have consequences. I mean, we, we've all experienced that in minor or, or major sorts of ways. And we will, we'll talk about that in, uh, in the next episode, but don't go running there without stopping and just contemplating the beauty of these words where the Lord takes away, puts away the sin of David and declares that he shall not die, which is scandalous in many ways. I mean, we've been talking for all this time about everything that David did, and it's horrendous. And we could talk for that same length of time about all the things we've done, and those things are horrendous too.

But at the end of the day, the one who has the last word is the God who says, well, your sin is forgiven. It's been put away by the death of Christ. All right, Chad, next week we are going to take a little bit of a break from 2 Samuel to look at Psalm 51. This is the first time we've done this, where we've jumped from a book into another book because of its connection. But Psalm 51 is David penning his repentance, and he's penning—this is David's account of these things. We can hear it in David's own words as he looks back on what it is that has happened. And so we're going to take a quick break. It's not really a break.

It's absolutely connected to the story, and then get back into the narrative in the episode after that. So next week's episode will be a little bit different, but exciting because, I mean, Psalm 51 is also one of the ways in which God has turned something bad into something good because Psalm 51 is something that would be greatly missed if it were not in the scriptures. So that's what we'll do next week. All right. Sounds good. We'll see you next week.