Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Why the World Still Needs "Sin" | Historical Books | 2 Samuel 12:16-31

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

Should we still use the word "sin"? Do you make excuses for your sin, or do you own them? What's the difference between the consequences of sin and the punishment for sin? In today's episode, Keith shares how 2 Samuel 12:16-31 encourages us to bring our burden of sin to the cross, where we find forgiveness. If you're listening on Spotify, tell us about yourself and where you're listening from! Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 2 Samuel 12:16-31

Welcome to 10 Minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. There was a book that was published in the 1970s whose title asked a question. The title was, whatever happened to sin? The author was a guy named Carl Menninger, and he was a well-respected psychiatrist, who was asking why no one spoke about sin anymore. Remember, this was written in the 70s, and Carl Menninger wasn't a Christian.

He asked whether any of our troubles were called. caused by sin. Was anyone guilty of anything anymore? Had anyone done anything sinful or did people just do stupid things? If we've done something wrong, he said we need to repent, but if we haven't sinned, maybe we just need medication. Menninger concluded that many former sins had been labeled crimes, so the responsibility for dealing with them had passed from the church to the state, from the priest to the policeman. Other sins have dissipated into illness, or at least, into symptoms of illness, so that in their case, punishment has been replaced with treatment. Meninger argued that sin hasn't really gone away, no matter how much we humans attempt to suppress it

or redefine it. He thought we needed to bring back the label of sin to make sense out of our world. We've spent the last few days here on TMBT thinking about how sin works out in our life through the story of David Mbashiba, her husband Uriah, and the prophet Nathan. Today we're going to think about the consequences of our sin and what forgiveness looks like. Lord, I pray that you would open your word so that we would understand it, and you would open our heart so that we would be transformed by the power of your word. Amen. One of the most important questions first and second Samuel is answering is who is the right king for Israel? The answer has been that David may serve his king because he's a man after God's own heart. But beginning with these chapters, we learn that David is just

like the rest of Oz. Though to all appearances, David is the ideal king and he looks invincible, he nonetheless has serious flaws and proves vulnerable at several important points. Yet this narrative will demonstrate that even in his sins, David is ideal. How so? Well, because unlike Saul, David repents genuinely and quickly when confronted with his sin. Let's see how it plays out in 2 Samuel chapter 12. We start with Nathan the prophet, confronting David. it on his sin. We pick up with Nathan speaking. Here's verse 9. Why then have you despised the word of the Lord and done this horrible deed? For you have murdered Uriah the Hittite with the sword of the Ammonites and stolen his wife. From this time on, your family will live by the sword because you have despised me

by taking Yariah's wife to be your own. So how will David respond to Nathan's rebuke? Here's David in verse 13. Then David confessed his sin to Nathan. I have sinned against the Lord. Nathan replied, Yes, but the Lord is forgiven you, and you won't die for this sin. Nevertheless, because you have shown utter contempt for the word of the Lord by doing this, your child will die. The text painfully recounts David's premeditated and methodical disobedience of at least three of the Ten Commandments. He violated the command to not covet your neighbor's wife. He violated the command to, and that you shall not commit adultery, and he violated the command you shall not murder. But his confession and his repentance are why David became known as Israel's ideal king.

To appreciate David's confession, we have to remember the roles of kings and prophets and other cultures in the ancient world. Because David is king, he doesn't have to confess the sin. Other kings did as much or far more than David had done wrong, and the prophets couldn't do anything about it. When Nathan confronted David, the king, could have had the prophet killed. He could have asked for another prophet, one who wouldn't call him out on his sin. But the books of Samuel are teaching us that Israel's kings are different, and they serve the true king, Yahweh. So David's faith is proved genuine because he confesses and repents of his sin, not because he's forced to, but because he wants to live and right

relationship with God. Ultimately, this is the difference between believers and unbelievers. It's the difference between Saul and David. When Saul made excuses for his sin, God rebuked him. When David repents of his sin, God forgives him. What about you? Do you make excuses for your sin, or do you own them? Do you hide your sin or do you repent of it? Well, at times in Israel's history, their law prescribed death for what David had done in committing adultery and murder. But God was merciful to David. Nathan said, the Lord has taken away your sin. The implication is that the sin has been removed. It's been carried off a great distance. As wonderful as this lesson is, the big question is, why? Why would Yahweh suspend his judgment

against David? Why doesn't he make an example of David for his sin? Well, if you read the story carefully, you see it comes down to a couple things. David genuinely repents. He genuinely humbles himself. He has a contrite mind, a contrite heart. And then secondly, and maybe even more importantly, this story illustrates the truth of one of Israel's ancient creeds. Yahweh is a compassionate and gracious God. Yahweh is slow to anger. He abounds in love and faithfulness. He maintains his love to thousands and forgives wickedness, rebellion, and sin.

God is a gracious God. He is a kind God. God loves to forgive his people. But even when God forgives, sin still still. has serious consequences in our life. David will not be punished for his sin, but the consequences of his sin remains. The child will die. The sin has been forgiven by God, and yet it will still do a lot of damage. It will still cause a lot of pain. It's a fundamental principle of life that God can forgive us and cleanse us, but the consequences of our sin may remain. The innocent suffer for

crimes committed by someone else, but their suffering isn't punishment for those crimes. A crack baby might die soon after birth because the mother used crack during pregnancy. The child dies. The mother lives. The child's death is not the punishment, but the consequences of the mother's drug use. Her punishment will look different. If you go back to Exodus 34, it says that Yahweh visits the iniquity or the sin of the parents upon the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation. God may allow sin's consequences to endure for three or maybe even four generations, but his love extends for a thousand generations of those who love me. In other words, Yahweh graciously limits the duration of sin's consequences that would otherwise

continue indefinitely. But his love is extended to a thousand generations. Because of Yahweh's grace, sin has a limited life, but love lasts forever. I think we should linger on this powerful truth that God forgives sinners. In fact, he loves to forgive repentant people. We've seen that David sins are serious, but as soon as he repent, God forgives. God loves and forgives because that's who he is. He is compassionate and gracious. The Old Testament is full of metaphors for forgiveness and the removal of our guilt. Sin, we're told, can be healed like a disease, or it can be forgotten like a fleeting thought. Sin can be stomped underfoot. It can be put behind our back, or it can be thrown into the depths of the sea. Sin can be cleansed. It can be washed. It can be washed.

sin can be wiped away and blotted out or erase. Sin can be separated as far as the east is from the west. Sin can be covered over or borne away. The Old Testament authors go to great lengths to dramatize what it means to be forgiven. See, all of us can identify with David in his sin. Those of us who have recognized our sin and have confessed, I have sin, just like David did. Well, we also need to hear the grace contained in Nathan's comforting words.

The Lord has taken away. sin. Doesn't that give you hope? Doesn't they give you joy? And doesn't that relieve you? The Lord has taken away your sin. Well, before we leave this passage, I want to return to the question we started with. Whatever happened to sin? When we discard sin, when we minimize sin, we cut ourselves off from the forgiveness Jesus offers. Jesus said he came for sinners, not the righteous. Now, please don't misunderstand. He didn't mean that some people are sinners than some aren't. He meant that some people know and feel and grasp their sin, and some don't. Our society's loss of any awareness of sin prevents us from understanding what the Bible teaches about repentance. How can we repent adequately

if we fail to understand the depths to which sin has affected our lives? A full appreciation of the self-destructive nature of our own actions should lead us to, it should even drive us to genuinely turn from our sin. David said in Psalm 51, reflecting on his sin with Bishiba, he said, surely I was sinful at birth. Sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Surely you desire truth in the inner parts. You teach me wisdom in the inmost place. And then there's forgiveness. See, finally, this text teaches us that genuine repentance results in forgiveness. This might be the hardest part of this story for us to accept. When we repent, when we turn to the from our sin and put our faith in Jesus, God forgives. He doesn't hold it against us.

I'd like to close with a picture of forgiveness from John Bunyan's allegory, the Pilgrim's Progress. If you're not familiar with it, you should definitely pick it up and read it. It's one of the all-time bestsellers. In this section, the little boy Christian is forgiven from his burden of sin that weighs him down. Here's how Bunyan pictures it. Now in my dream, the highway on which Christian, that's the boy, was to travel, was fenced in on both sides with a wall called salvation. The burdened Christian ran up this way with great difficulty because of the load on his back. He ran like this until he came to a place where the road climbed up a small hill. At the top of the hill stood across, and a little below at the bottom was a stone

tomb. In my dream, just as Christian came up to the cross, his burdened loosened from his shoulders and fell off his back. It tumbled and continued to do so down the hill until it came to the mouth of the tomb where it fell inside and it was seen no more. Christian was so glad and overjoyed and in his excitement, he said, He has given me rest by his sorrow and life by his death.

Christian, take your sin to the cross and find the forgiveness that only Jesus offers. Amen.