2 Samuel 12

David had violated God's holy Law. Now he was acting as if the Lord were not there at all. He needed to be confronted with his own guilt and with the Lord God's amazing mercy.

The love of God for the guilty is almost embarrassing. It disarms our defenses and changes our lives. But we do need to know that we are guilty.

The prophet Nathan was God's agent of mercy to David. He confronted David with a story about a poor man who loved a little lamb as if the pet were his own daughter. A rich man insisted on having that poor man's lamb, even though he had plenty of other lambs in his own flock. He slaughtered that poor man's lamb and left him without his dearest pet.

David knew how to think through this situation as long as Nathan was talking about a precious little lamb. It was plainly obvious who was in the wrong and what ought to be done.

But now the words of honest, unfeigned mercy began to do their work. “You are the man!... Why have you despised the word of the LORD, to do what is evil in His sight? You have 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.”

This direct confrontation of the king's adultery and murder sounds like judgment, but to the Lord's anointed servant, it is the severe mercy of God that wakes him up from his strange spiritual stupor. David will live. He will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Nothing can separate him from the eternal love of God for him. But the love of God will not be a pretend game. Sin will be confronted and routed out. The evil within will be defeated and the child of God will rise up again.

Nonetheless, in this world you will have tribulation. Uriah was dead. His precious lamb had been stolen, and David was the thief. Now Bathsheba would give birth to a child, but that child would die, though David knew that the child would walk again in the land of the living above. The child would not come back to David, but David would go to him in heaven one day. Bathsheba would have another child, Solomon, who would be born to serve as Israel's next king. There would be much trouble that would come into many lives, but David would know the love of the Lord who works out a costly solution to the problems of our deepest sins. This is the mercy of God that has come to us through the cross of Christ.

If David's baby had no heaven to go to, if Uriah's final destination were the grave, if grief over loss were the only truth for mourning people in this world of sin and death, how could anyone find the strength to serve the Lord in the beauty of holiness? But there is abundant mercy for the Lord's lambs. The Good Shepherd has come, and laid down His life for the sheep. He never stole anyone's pet. He never had an adulterous or murderous thought. Now He has become for us the living proof of the mercy of God for sheep who wander, sometimes very, very, badly.

“The Lord has put away your sin.” But what a cost for us to live as the beloved of the Lord! The Son of God would die. Yet now Jesus reigns in the land of the living. He is the Author of God's abundant mercy to us. He leads us forward in resurrection victory. The enemy within, an enemy more troubling than all the soldiers that threatened the peace of Israel, has been defeated through the gift of the Almighty. Our lives have been saved, and we have been shown to be the Lord's beloved children. “Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.”