A Fallen King (2)

[0:00] The following sermon is made available by Lakeside Bible Church in Cornelius, North Carolina.

[0:15] For more information about our church or to find more recorded sermons, please visit us online at lakesidebible.church. We'd also love to connect with you on social media.

[0:25] You can find us by searching Lakeside Bible NC on Facebook and Instagram. For specific questions about the Bible or our church, please email us at info at lakesidebible.church.

[0:40] As we study through this particular narrative in chapter 11, we made a note last week that it is free of any emotion or reason. It moves from action to action.

[0:52] And as Ralph Davis said, the writer of this book seems to silence all feelings in order that he may isolate David's action.

[1:05] As we go through this particular chapter, not only in his desire to stay at home or in his lust after Bathsheba or in his sin of adultery, but then as we progress into this narrative today and we see the deceit that he has with Uriah, the drunkenness with Uriah, what eventually leads not only to the murder of this woman's husband, but the murder of several other soldiers in the process of it, all just to cover his sin, we see that there is no reasonings given.

[1:34] There is no feelings or emotions listed. It goes from action to action. And the purpose in that is to remind us that our reasons and our feelings in relation to our sin are irrelevant.

[1:48] Sin is sin. What God says is sin is sin no matter how we may feel about it, no matter what reason we may come up with to try to justify what we have decided to do with our lives.

[2:01] And so the writer doesn't give us the feelings of David or Bathsheba or Uriah except for one verse in verse 11. It doesn't give us the feelings or reasonings of Joab or anyone else.

[2:12] He just reveals the sin. Last week we looked at where sin begins. And we noted that sin is conceived at the convergence of desire and opportunity.

[2:26] Desire is the lust of our heart. It is what we set our minds on. It is therefore a battle of the mind. The things that we set our minds on, the Bible says, are to be the things that are true and pure and righteous and holy in Philippians 4.8.

[2:41] But then what David had done in this instance is he had set his mind on things that were impure. Well, sin takes place at the moment that our desires meet opportunity.

[2:51] And the opportunity for David in this passage came when he stayed at home from the war instead of being where he should have been. And in the process of that, made his way to the roof, saw Bathsheba, and had an opportunity to act while her husband was away at war.

[3:10] So it's a battle of the mind, but then it's also a battle of the will. We sin by choice, not by force. No one makes us do wrong.

[3:22] Whenever we fall into sinful behavior, it's because we have chosen to do so. But fortunately, God has given us a way of escape. In fact, the Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians 10 that no temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.

[3:38] But God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability. But with the temptation, he will provide a way of escape. And he does that for us in his grace.

[3:50] As believers, he provides ways of escape in the temptation that we face. And we noted how David had opportunity after opportunity in these first five verses to escape this sinful behavior.

[4:02] To walk away from his fleshly desire. To not seize the opportunity to sin. And we saw that first in verse 1 as he chose to stay home instead of go to war. We see that in verse 2.

[4:14] The steps that went up to the roof also led down from the roof. At the moment that he saw Bathsheba, a pure and righteous man would have shielded his eyes, walked away, and left in purity.

[4:26] But David did not do that. He gawked at the woman. He fantasized about her. And eventually he took her. And then in verse 3, we see God gives a voice.

[4:38] Someone in the palace, as David says, go get me this woman, go get Bathsheba. Someone in the palace says, is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah?

[4:51] Eliam and Uriah were both mighty men of David. They fought with him shoulder to shoulder. They were some of his closest friends in this life. In the times that he ran from Saul, in the times before he was king, when he was counting on those who were closest to him to protect him, Eliam and Uriah were two men that were side by side with him.

[5:14] And these were the men that God reminded him in that moment. It is these men that you will betray if you follow through on this. This lady, this woman does not belong to you, David. But he took her and he laid with her.

[5:27] And we left off in verse 5 after he realized and was told that she was with child. And then David is faced with yet another choice.

[5:40] What's he going to do now that the secret is bound to get out? And that's where the passage picks up. Adultery is a sin that was punishable by death according to the law in Judah and in Israel.

[5:55] In fact, Leviticus chapter 20 and verse 10 says, If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be surely put to death.

[6:07] There were severe consequences for the sin that David had just committed. He also had a very healthy reputation among the people that would have surely been wrecked had this news of his sin with Bathsheba been leaked to the press in Jerusalem.

[6:24] What he was faced with here was a crucial decision. He could do one of two things. He could confess his sin and repent and seek for mercy. Or as the king, he could protect his reputation and devise a plan that would make all of this go away.

[6:43] And verses 6 through 13 show us the decision that he actually makes. The solution that he contrived centered on getting Uriah home from the battlefield in order that he might have physical relations with his wife Bathsheba.

[6:59] So David immediately sends for Uriah to come off the battlefield. Look with me at verse number 6. And David sent to Joab, that is the general saying, Send me Uriah the Hittite.

[7:10] And Joab sent Uriah to David. Now David was no lightweight when it came to deception. If you go back to the book of 1 Samuel, specifically chapter 21, you'll see that before David was ever king, he was on the run from King Saul.

[7:24] And he decided at one point to go and find shelter in the country of the Philistines. And he immediately regretted that decision. They were the enemies of Israel. They were the enemy of David. And he found himself before the king of the Philistines.

[7:38] And if you remember the story of 1 Samuel chapter 21, David pretended as if he was a crazy man, as if he had completely lost his mind. He let the drool and the spit run down his beard, the Bible says.

[7:49] And then he goes through to the point that the king of the Philistines just wants him out of his sight. And he says, Do I not have enough crazy people around me? And David was able to escape. He was no lightweight when it came to deception.

[8:01] And so when we get to verse 7, Uriah shows up. And what's David going to do? Is he going to confess to Uriah what he had just done? That would have been the noble thing to do. That would have been the righteous thing to do.

[8:12] But he doesn't do that at all. He pretends as if he's actually concerned about the war. Look at verse 7. And when Uriah was coming to him, David demanded of him how Joab did and how the people did and how the war prospered.

[8:24] He put on a good show for Uriah so that he wouldn't be curious as to why he was pulled off the battlefield. But the whole point was to get Uriah home.

[8:37] So he encouraged him to go to his house and enjoy his wife before returning to the battle. And he even had a large gift as if he wanted to give them a nice romantic evening together.

[8:49] Look at verse 8. David said to Uriah, go down into thy house and wash thy feet. Now here's another weird phrase that the Bible uses. This was a Near Eastern custom that prior to going to bed, one of the last things someone would do is wash their feet.

[9:03] It was a part of their ritual for getting ready for bed, ready for the evening. This was a euphemism for David telling Uriah, go to your house and enjoy your wife. You're home from the battlefield.

[9:15] Go enjoy your wife. And in fact, as you go to your house, I'm going to make sure that you can enjoy her properly. So he sends a mess of meat, it says in the King James, but it's really just a gift.

[9:26] He sends a gift behind Uriah with the servants as if to provide this romantic evening for them. He's surely going to take David up on this offer. And as far as David could tell, he was in full control and he was on his way to moving forward with his life, no worse for the wear.

[9:45] He had created a cover-up to hide his sin and he was hoping just to move on. But the cover-up was frustrated. And we see the frustration because David didn't count on one element that would have ruined his plan.

[10:04] And that was the integrity of Uriah. Look with me at verse 9. But Uriah slept at the door of the king's house with all the servants of his lord.

[10:17] David counted on every provision possible. He prepared the great meal that he could send. He gets Uriah by himself. He pretends as if he only cares about the war. And now, as your friend, Uriah, I just want you to go home and spend some time with Bathsheba and Joyer.

[10:33] And here's a gift to take along with you. And he thought that he had everything in line to cover up this sin in his life. But the thing that he didn't count on was the righteousness of Uriah. And so instead of going home to enjoy his wife, Uriah bumped up with the palace servants.

[10:48] And he goes to the gate of the king's palace and he literally sleeps with the slaves because he refuses to go home when all of his brothers were at war.

[10:59] And David can't believe it. Look at verse 10. Verse 11 is so awesome here.

[11:16] Because the statement that Uriah makes back to King David is piercing. It's a call back to verse 1, clearly indicating that Uriah was offended that David wasn't with everybody else.

[11:31] Here's what he says. What a dagger to the heart of King David in that moment.

[12:01] He's divided this whole plan to get Uriah back just so he could cover up the fact that he slept with his wife. And now Uriah comes back and he's sure Uriah's going to go and enjoy this nice evening.

[12:13] And Uriah says, no, as long as everybody's at war, I'm not going to enjoy the things that they can't enjoy. I'll sleep happily right here with the servants until you let me go back. The whole plan is frustrated.

[12:25] It's stopped. He can't move forward with what he wants to do. As it turns out, the man after God's own heart in 2 Samuel 11 was Uriah the Hittite, not David the shepherd of Israel.

[12:42] We often reference David as that, right? He's the man after God's own heart, the great shepherd of Israel, the one who calls us to look forward to the Messiah. That's who David is. But in this passage, he is not that at all.

[12:52] The person more resembling the integrity and the righteousness of God is a man that wasn't even an Israelite. He was a Hittite who had converted to Judaism at some point along the way, who had fought for Israel when he didn't even belong to Israel to begin with.

[13:11] And he's the one that was acting more after God's own heart in this passage than King David. Well, David takes one more opportunity to make this happen. God has given another opportunity for him to confess, another opportunity for him to come clean.

[13:28] But instead of doing that, he tells Uriah in verse 12, Terry here today also, and tomorrow I will let thee depart. So Uriah abode in Jerusalem that day in the morrow.

[13:39] And when David had called him, he did eat and drink before him, and he made him drunk. And at even, he went out to lie on his bed with the servants of his Lord.

[13:50] But he went not down to his house. David takes one more stab at it. He says, Uriah wouldn't go and spend the night with Bathsheba, so I'll get him drunk.

[14:02] I'll take away all of his cognitive abilities. I'll take away every reasoning power that he has, and surely at this point he'll go down and all of this will be over. But even drunk, Uriah was a better man than David was, sober.

[14:17] And he still wouldn't go down to the house. Unrepentant sin can do nothing but grow. It can do nothing but grow.

[14:30] Under the surface of our deception, hidden sin takes root, and it expands in ways that even the sinner doesn't always realize himself.

[14:44] It's like a cancer spreading to every part of our being, and the longer we try to ignore it, the more deadly this hidden, unrepentant sin becomes. Follow the progression here in this story.

[14:57] We're not even at the worst part of it yet. It starts with a little bit of laziness, and that laziness made an opportunity for lust, and that lust became covetousness as he coveted another man's wife.

[15:08] And that covetousness, that desire met with opportunity, becomes the sin of adultery. And to cover up the sin of adultery becomes a liar. And in the process of lying, he makes a man drunk and probably even gets a little bit wasted himself in that whole process.

[15:23] We see what started as something innocent. I just want a little extra time of vacation from war. Ended up following in this path of sin as it grew and it grew. And the more he tried to hide it, the worse the sin became.

[15:37] We're not unfamiliar with this scenario. We face the same crucial decision every time we fall into sin. As bad as the sin itself is, there is nothing more pathetic and damaging than our attempts to hide it.

[15:57] And that's exactly what David was doing. The scriptures often acknowledge this tendency. And they reveal to us both the consequences and the way out.

[16:10] The only option in dealing with sin biblically is to confess and forsake it. Confess and forsake it.

[16:20] Think of Proverbs 28, 13. Whoever conceals a transgression will not prosper. But he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.

[16:34] And then he goes further in verse 14 and Solomon writes, Blessed is the one who fears the Lord always. But whoever hardens his heart will fall into calamity.

[16:47] What is the result of hiding sin and trying to cover sin in our lives? We continue to fall into more sin, more calamity. What David was doing in 2 Samuel 11 was he was hardening his heart.

[17:00] And the more he hardened his heart, the more calamity, the more evil, the more sin that he began to fall into. And so it began to grow just like a cancer spreads and destroys the body.

[17:11] But remember what the New Testament tells us in 1 John 1. If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins.

[17:22] And then what does he do? He cleanses us from all unrighteousness. Proverbs 28, 14. He who hardens his heart will continue to fall into calamity, will continue to fall into sin.

[17:34] 1 John 1, 9. He who confesses his sin, God will not only forgive it, but he will prevent you from falling into more sin. He will put a stop to it. He will cleanse you from all unrighteousness.

[17:47] Unrighteousness. The only option is to confess and forsake. To try to hide it is futile. It's damaging. Is there a sin in your life that you've been working real hard to hide?

[18:01] Don't hide it. Don't hide it any longer. It's only going to hurt you more. It will only lead to more sin.

[18:13] But if you confess it and forsake it, God will forgive you. That's his promise. Confess and forsake and he will forgive.

[18:23] Because who confesses and forsakes will obtain mercy. So we see David's frustrated plan. Now we see his murderous plan.

[18:37] Verses 14 to 24. Now think about this. Just a few days before this, David was a beloved king that was enjoying an extended vacation from war.

[18:48] But now he's a monster that's spiraling totally out of control. And by the way, remember, David's a believer. In New Testament terminology, he's a Christian.

[19:01] He's at church today. Worshiping. Sitting in your seat. There's a popular saying that I think is fitting here.

[19:12] It's been attributed to a lot of people over time. I don't know who it actually belongs to, but you'll probably recognize the saying. Sin will take you farther than you want to go. It will keep you longer than you want to stay.

[19:25] And it will cost you more than you want to pay. Just a few days before this, David's the beloved king of Israel. Now, it's everything he can do to hide this sin.

[19:39] And now he's spiraling out of control so that it ends in murder. When he first saw Bathsheba, he never expected to fall this far.

[19:53] He just wanted a night of pleasure. He just thought, it's one night. It's one moment. What harm could come? And now look at him.

[20:04] No one looks with lust on a woman and thinks, I'm probably going to end up murdering somebody for this. No one-night stand ever expects to destroy an entire kingdom or even a family for that matter.

[20:18] Just like Adam and Eve never expected the bite of the forbidden fruit to necessitate the execution of God's only begotten son.

[20:31] But that's the danger in sin. It's never what you think it is. And you never have the power over it that you think you have. Well, let's look at what happened with David.

[20:43] First, we see a sinister plot in verses 14 to 17. He's once again given an opportunity to repent. But he was intent on carrying out his desired cover-up.

[20:56] Ultimately, his pride was more important to him than the glory of God. So what he resulted to was to eliminate Uriah altogether.

[21:07] Look at verse 14. And it came to pass in the morning that David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. And he wrote in the letter saying, Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the fiercest battle, and then return you from him, that he may be smitten and die.

[21:28] He wrote out exactly how he wanted Uriah to be killed. And then he sent Uriah away as the unknowing messenger of his own execution. Now think about this.

[21:40] Uriah had so much integrity. David knew he would never open up that letter. And he puts in his own hand the sentence of execution to take to Joab.

[21:52] Look at verse 16. And it came to pass when Joab observed the city that he assigned Uriah unto a place where he knew that valiant men were. That is, valiant men from Ammon, the Ammonites.

[22:04] And the men of the city went out and fought with Joab. And there fell some of the people of the servants of David. And Uriah the Hittite died also. We often consider this as merely the murder of Uriah, but he wasn't the only one killed.

[22:18] David's plot ended up being a case of multiple homicides. It wasn't just Uriah. So we see a sinister plot.

[22:29] Uriah is now dead. And then we see in 18 to 24 how that hidden sin makes us an utter contradiction. Unrepentant sin does exactly that.

[22:41] We end up contradicting everything that we've ever stood for. It changes who we are. Now I want you to look at verse 18. Joab sent a message back to David.

[22:53] And here's what he expected David to respond with. Verse 19. He charged the messenger saying, When you have made an end of telling the matters of the war unto the king, and if so be that King David's wrath arise, and he say unto thee, Wherefore approach you so nigh unto the city when you did fight?

[23:12] Know ye not that they would shoot from the wall? And then he recalls back to an historical figure in the Old Testament in the book of Judges. Who spoke Abimelech, the son of Gideon? Did not a woman cast a piece of a millstone from off the wall that he died?

[23:26] Why went you nigh unto the wall? And Joab says, Then say to David, Thy servant Uriah the Hittite is dead. Also. Joab fully anticipated David to be angry at this ridiculous strategy of war.

[23:44] And so upon the message returning, he expected fully David to be angry. So the catch at the end is, Make sure to tell him that Uriah is dead. So when we talk about all these other men that have died, make sure he knows it's his fault.

[23:58] We were doing what you said to do. Made him an utter contradiction. David had always been known for avoiding unnecessary bloodshed.

[24:10] He was always known for that. But now, he's being careless with not just one life, but many lives. This hidden sin makes him an utter contradiction.

[24:21] The same man that once put Mephibosheth, his enemy's grandson, at his own table, had now put one of his mighty men in the grave. His sin had made him uncharacteristically ruthless.

[24:32] And it will do the same to us as well. And so we see his murderous plan. Finally, we see his calloused heart. Verses 25 to 27.

[24:43] His calloused heart. It's not hard to see the progression of David's sin. His unrepentant transgression led to a desperate cover-up that resulted in a senseless murder that left the man after God's own heart with a heart of stone.

[25:01] Each step of the way, David's heart gets harder and harder and harder. And the end result was self-deception. And then it was also self-obsession.

[25:12] Look at the self-deception in verse 25. David said unto the messenger, after he had came and delivered this message, here's what you need to say to Joab. Let not this thing displease thee, for the sword devoureth one as well as another.

[25:30] The literal translation of that phrase, let not this thing displease thee, the literal translation is, don't let this be evil in your eyes. And otherwise, Joab, don't worry about it.

[25:40] Don't let this look evil in your eyes. It's war. People die at war. Uriah was bound to die eventually. We just sped up the process a little bit. That's essentially what he sends back to Joab.

[25:51] He says, tell him, don't let this look evil in your eyes. It's not that big of a deal. He self-deceived. This is the same ridiculous form of self-justification that we often subscribe to when trying to live with our own sin.

[26:10] Come up with all the reasons why it's not that big of a deal. And a telling sign of unrepentant sin is when you have to continually convince yourself and others that it's just not that big of a deal.

[26:23] You ever find yourself in that position? Family or friends or fellow Christians are trying to encourage you or they're trying to prod you along in something, and what you keep coming back to is it's just not that big of a deal.

[26:36] Well, it's a pretty good sign that there's probably some unrepentant sin, and it's beginning to grow under the surface. And if you're not careful, it's going to spiral out of control. Best to confess and forsake.

[26:48] David had become self-deceived. He convinced himself that this wasn't a big deal. Uriah was bound to die anyways. But then he was self-obsessed. Look at verse 26. Another telling sign of a hardened heart is total self-obsession.

[27:24] David didn't care about anybody but himself. This entire narrative reeks of narcissism. And indeed, sin always has self-fulfillment as its ultimate goal.

[27:39] News finally comes to Bathsheba that Uriah is dead. We don't know if she was involved in the plot. We have no idea if she expected this at all. All we know is that she went through the customary time of mourning.

[27:52] We don't know if it was genuine. Probably part of it had to be. All we know is that she mourned. Typical mourning process in that day would have been seven days.

[28:03] For seven days, she mourns and grieves publicly over the loss of her husband. Do you notice what the Bible says, who the Bible says doesn't mourn at all? David's absent from grief.

[28:16] He's absent from mourning. This is one of his closest friends. This is not a stranger. Yet from what we can tell in this passage, this sin has hardened his heart so firmly that he doesn't even care that he's just murdered one of his closest friends.

[28:35] He doesn't grieve. Instead, he lets Bathsheba go through her seven days. And at the end of the seven days, what does he do? He marries her.

[28:47] He adds her to his harem. And ultimately says, the pregnancy came after Uriah's death. It's a calloused heart. He cared about nobody but himself.

[29:01] Self-fulfillment was at the forefront of his mind. What a self-obsessed, cold-hearted individual. In truth, David is representative of all of us.

[29:16] In one way or another, we likely have gone through this same progression of hidden sin, even if it's to a lesser degree. So we don't come to this narrative casting stones, but rather heeding the warning that if a man like David can fall as far as he did, surely we can too.

[29:35] Any thinking person at this point, and we'll close with this, eventually we'll come to a place in this passage where they ask the question, where is God in all of this?

[29:49] Why did he allow it to go as far as it went? Why did he allow David to carry this out to the point that just to cover up this adultery, he not only murdered Uriah but a bunch of other men as well?

[30:01] And the text doesn't resolve that question for us. Like other questions with God's timing and purposes, we must leave the answer to the perfect wisdom of God. Remember what Paul wrote to the Romans, who has known the mind of the Lord, who has been his counselor?

[30:19] While God doesn't give us every possible answer for our understanding, he does give us every truth necessary for our understanding. And it's not important for us to know why God waited the way that he waited.

[30:35] But there is something vitally important in this passage that we must give our attention to as we close. It's the most important sentence of the entire chapter. In fact, the entire narrative in both chapters, most important sentence.

[30:49] It's the last sentence in verse 27. But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord. The thing that David had done displeased the Lord.

[31:01] Same word that David used in his message back to Uriah. Remember what he said? Or back to Joab. Remember what he said? Joab, don't let this thing look evil in your eyes. And two verses later, here's God saying, the thing that David did was evil in my eyes.

[31:16] And we often come to our sin, we come to our lives, and we think it's not that big of a deal. Don't let this look evil in your eyes. It's not evil in my eyes. But the whole time, God is looking, and he's seeing the way we're behaving.

[31:27] He's seeing the way that we're living. And it's evil in his eyes. The most important verse in the whole passage is this one. Because it finally reveals to us what God's mind was in all of this.

[31:38] What his heart was in all of this. It displeased the Lord. It was evil in his eyes. Davis said, the force of this bottom line comes from the fact that it is literally the bottom line.

[31:51] The last line of the chapter. The writer relates this whole sordid tale of lust and sex and deceit and murder without pausing to make marginal moral notations along the way.

[32:02] He details every step of the story as if God were nowhere involved. This silence about God, however, only serves to accentuate the lone statement.

[32:14] God may be silent, but he is not sightless. He may be silent, but he is not sightless. Many times we go through our lives as Christians, and we think that we're being successful in our cover-ups, and we think that it's not that big a deal for us to live the way we are.

[32:33] After all, my life is still pretty pleasant. God may be silent right now in your life, but he is not sightless. He sees it all. He knows it all, and he will judge it all.

[32:48] Alistair Begg said, in order to sin like David, you have to anesthetize the fear of God in your heart. You have to anesthetize the fear of God in your heart.

[32:58] That's the first thing that goes. You start to believe that if you can pull the wool over everyone else's eyes, then God's not going to see it either, even though you know in your heart that he always sees everything.

[33:11] And make no mistake, while it may seem like God is absent and you are successful, he is there. He sees what no one else sees, and he knows what only you know.

[33:25] And the scriptures attest to this. Proverbs 15, 3. The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good. Jeremiah 23.

[33:36] Am I a God at hand, declares the Lord, and not a God far away? Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him, declares the Lord? Do I not fill heaven and earth, declares the Lord?

[33:49] Psalm 139, ironically written by King David. O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You understand my thought from afar.

[34:00] You scrutinize my path and my lying down and are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, David writes, behold, O Lord, you know it all.

[34:11] You've enclosed me behind and before. You laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It's too high. I can't attain it. Where can I go from your spirit?

[34:22] Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, you are there. He sees it all. He knows it all. You can't escape it.

[34:35] How could a man, after God's own heart, do such a thing we might ask? We ask that about David, but what we need to be doing is asking it of ourselves.

[34:46] How could a people that claim to follow the Lord Jesus Christ continue in the very sin that they say he came to die for? How can we preach the love of Christ and yet treat others with such hatefulness and slander?

[35:03] How can we say that our minds are being renewed in conformity to Christ and then fill it continually with the filth of the world? It's important to acknowledge God's displeasure with David's sin, but what we really need to be doing is acknowledging God's displeasure with our own sin.

[35:19] In 1 John 2, don't love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

[35:31] For all that is of the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life is not from God, but it is from the world. And the world is passing away and all of its lust, but the will, the one who does the will of God lives forever.

[35:48] God must judge sin. God must judge sin. God must judge sin. His holy character demands it. But that's the amazing thing about God's grace through Christ. Jesus has taken the full punishment on behalf of anyone that will follow him.

[36:05] Do you realize that's the significance of the cross? He bore the wrath of God that we are destined for. And he did that in order that we might be made free from this sin, in order that we might be made forgiven, in order that we may obtain salvation.

[36:26] The Father has put his judgment on the Son, in order that believers may be forgiven and restored. 2 Corinthians 5.21.

[36:36] For our sake, God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Christ we might become the righteousness of God.

[36:47] Isaiah 53.5. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought peace.

[36:59] And with his wounds, we are healed. 1 John chapter 4. In this is love. Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us.

[37:10] And sent his Son to be a propitiation for our sins. What does propitiation mean? It means payment in full. He didn't just pay for one of your sins. He paid for all of your sins if you will just believe and follow him.

[37:26] And maybe you're an unbeliever here today, and you say, what am I supposed to do with that? What does that actually mean for me? What am I supposed to do? There's nothing you can do.

[37:41] There's no salvation that comes by merit, by work. The Bible says repent, believe, and follow Christ.

[37:54] That's salvation. That's the gospel. That's the freeing part of the gospel. You say, what am I supposed to do with all this information about Christ? Believe it. Believe it and follow him.

[38:06] Leave off the sin of your life. Leave off the things that you have been pursuing in your life. Stop trying to work your way to God's favor. And just believe. Believe him. Follow him.

[38:19] All those who believe in Christ's death and resurrection and follow him as Lord will be saved and will receive eternal life. Acts 16.31. Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.

[38:34] John 3. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. And whoever believes in him, Jesus said, is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not yet believed in the name of the only Son of God.

[38:53] 1 John 2. I'm writing these things to you that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

[39:06] He is the propitiation, the payment in full for our sins, not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. You say, what am I supposed to do with this?

[39:17] Believe it. Trust him. Follow him. And you will be saved. You will be forgiven. And then maybe you're a believer here today like David.

[39:28] You say, if my sin has been forgiven by Jesus, doesn't that mean that I can sin without consequence? Do I really have to care that much about the sin of my life?

[39:40] Of course you do. That's the kind of self-deception that reveals an individual is already deep in hidden sin. The Bible teaches that God works in believers to conform them to the image of Christ.

[39:56] And though we're not yet perfected, the spirit of a true believer would never use the grace of God as a license to sin. They understand that holiness matters.

[40:08] Romans 6 explains this to us. Paul says, What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it?

[40:24] Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried, therefore, with him in baptism into death. In order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

[40:40] So do not present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments of righteousness.

[40:53] We are salt and light in this world. And what good is salt if it's lost its savor? And what good is light if it's hidden under a bushel, Jesus said?

[41:04] If God has saved you, live as if he has. Why should we, who have put sin to death through Christ, continue to live therein?

[41:16] It's not pleasing to the Lord. Ephesians 1 tells us exactly why God has saved us. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.

[41:34] And here's why he did that. That we should be holy and blameless before him. And so when we understand the context of the whole Bible, we understand that the most important phrase in 2 Samuel 11 is the thing that David did was evil in the sight of the Lord.

[41:55] Didn't matter how David viewed it. God would be his judge. And as we'll find out next week, the judgment was severe. Thank you for listening to this sermon made available by Lakeside Bible Church.

[42:08] Feel free to share it wherever you'd like. Please do not charge for it or alter it in any way without express written consent from Lakeside Bible Church. Don't forget to visit us online at lakesidebible.church or find us on Facebook and Instagram by searching for Lakeside Bible NC.

[42:25] If you live in the Charlotte or Lake Norman area, we'd love for you to attend one of our worship services. We meet every Sunday morning at 10 a.m. We'd love to meet you.