1 Samuel Lesson 64
Discipline on David’s house begins – 2 Samuel
12:13-25
Tonight we finish the section on David’s confession and
restoration. This is one of the
highlights of the Old Testament because in this you have the true picture of David’s
plight and how he confessed his sin.
Three Psalms come out of this period in David’s life, Psalm 32, 38 and
51. All three of these Psalms teach how
to get back in fellowship. We left David
in the act of confessing, in verse 13, “And David said unto Nathan, I have
sinned against the LORD.”
Now the issue at the point of confession can be seen by our two
circles. God, from eternity, called his
people to salvation. God the Father, God
the Son and God the Holy Spirit, each personality of the Trinity has a role,
from all eternity, in each individual’s salvation. This circle represents, at this point in our
illustration, David’s legal position before God. David is one who has had his sins pronounced
forgiven. That is justification; that is
a doctrine that is very misunderstood today.
So David is a justified person.
He’s a person who has had his position legally stated, but the legal
position, this top circle, is not his actual position in time, that’s his legal
position. But as far as David sees, he
only sees that amount that God sees fit to project into history. All David sees of his present current
condition is the bottom circle, and therefore David at any given time is going
to say he is in fellowship or out of fellowship, his sins are forgiven or they
are not forgiven. When he says his sins
are not forgiven, this does not mean David is implying he’s not justified. It’s not saying that he’s lost his salvation;
it’s saying that he has come out of this bottom circle, that the bottom circle,
representing his present experience, is what defines his state at that
point. In other words, David can say my
sins are not forgiven and as far as he experientially is concerned, he is
separated from God.
Now he knows by the Word of God that God has justified him, but he has
no experiential appreciation of justification as long as his sins remain
unconfessed, and therefore unforgiven.
So unconfessed sin in the life with the believer out of the bottom
circle leaves him eventually without assurance.
It’s important you understand at least that concept of the top and
bottom circles to appreciate what is happening in verse 13. David says I have sinned; at this point he
acknowledges his sin, and because of grace, God restores him. Now let’s not get too abstract with our
circles and let’s now recreate the event without the circle, just de-emphasize
the circle and to bring to the foreground what David would have perceived. And as we continue out study of
Let’s look at what he has in his present experience outside of the
bottom circle. Turn to Psalm 32, this is
empirically his bottom circle being outside of it. Here’s what his experience is in present
moment. He lists several things that are
true about his experience. He says in
verse 3, “when I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my screaming all the
day long.” Now obviously at this point
David is experiencing physical illness.
That is an empirical perception that he’s out of fellowship. He says in verse 4, “Thy hand was heavy upon
me; my moisture is turned into the drought of summer,” he’s experiencing
physical dehydration. So these are
things that he can perceive about his body, he doesn’t need anybody to draw a
circle, he knows he’s out of it because he’s experiencing these things.
He knows that his sin is before, Psalm 51, here is how he perceives he
is out of fellowship. It says in verse
3, “I know my transgressions,” not the word “acknowledge” as in the King James,
it’s simply the word “I know,” and it’s present, “I always know my
transgressions, my sin is always before me.”
So David is guilty, and we can deduce several other things about this,
he is physically ill, he is guilty, he’s probably avoiding Nathan because
Nathan is a representative of God and David is in a situation where he, out of
fellowship, doesn’t want anything to do with it. We can also say in his life experience in the
present moment that he probably is minus the Word. He probably has not been studying God’s
Word. We know that he hasn’t been going
to the temple so that’s out; so all these things describe what it means to be
outside of that bottom circle. If you
said David are you out of the bottom circle, he’d have looked at you wondering
what are you talking about. Well, this
is what is meant; these things were true factually about his life.
Now turn back to 2 Samuel; all these things are true and at this point
in verse 13 he confesses. You recall
though, from last time, before he confessed Nathan tricked him. Nathan tricked him into judging himself and
David passed two sentences upon himself; one in verse 5, he said: “As the LORD
lives, the man who has done this thing shall surely die.” So he pronounced capital punishment upon
himself. Second, in verse 6, he
pronounced a four-fold restoration.
These two sentences were pronounced by David, on himself by trickery
through Nathan. Now when Nathan finally
reveals to him in verse 7, “Thou art the man,” at this point David realizes
that both of these sentences accrue to his account. Now one of those sentences is legal, that’s
the four-fold restitution; we showed that from the Law. The other sentence is excessive, the capital
punishment is an excessive punishment, over and beyond what the Law requires in
such a case. David was acting in
vengeance.
Now it’s interesting then that when he confesses his sin God removes one
of these sentences but not the other.
God allows David to judge himself but David must make four-fold
restitution, because four times he will lose a male son; four times. The first time, the infant lost here and
three other times, Amnon, Absalom and Adonijah, all three of those sons will be
lost. So David does make a four-fold
restitution. He took Uriah the Hittite’s
life and now he must give four times that out of his own flesh and blood. But the other sentence, being cruel, being
vicious, being supra-legal, being above the Law, God says no David, that
sentence is eliminated. But it’s not
totally into non-existence, it totally isn’t dismissed and now we’re going to
see how God works.
2 Samuel 12:13, “… And Nathan said unto David,” (quote) “The LORD also
has put away thy sin; thou shalt not die.”
But verse 13 cannot be divorced from verse 14; in fact in the original
language there’s a peculiar construction and it’s connected with a particle, gam; gam and gam, it occurs twice. It can
be translated many ways; one way we’re going to translate it here is: on the
one hand but on the other hand.
Sometimes in Greek you’ll see the expression in a sentence, kai kai, both and, and sometimes you can
translate it and and. But gam is a particle in the Hebrew that has
this two-fold usage. Now the particle
occurs in verse 13, “The LORD also has put away thy sin,” now the gam occurs before the subject “LORD,” in
other words, there’s going to be two-fold action. Nathan is acting as God’s spokesman, “On the
one hand the LORD has put away thy sin,” that’s the pronouncement of forgiveness. The pronouncement of forgiveness solved all
the other problems. Now watch how this
works, because David is going to get relief, but it starts with the
pronouncement of forgiveness. What was
David’s prime problem? Guilt through
disobedience. It starts, therefore, with
a sentence of forgiveness. Nathan says
“God has moved your sin away from you,” literally, it is a powerful form of the
Hebrew verb to cross over. And by putting
it in the hiphil it makes it as if God has lifted and has removed your sin away
from you. Therefore, “you shall not die.”
So let’s go back to the two circles and see if we can appreciate what’s
happened here. Why is it important for
Nathan to pronounce his stark temporal forgiveness even though we know David
was eternally justified. David was in
the top circle, David never could get out of the top circle, why then was this
sentence of forgiveness a very, very important sentence? Because justification has to do with the
transaction that is in heaven, that you and I cannot experience. There’s no way any of us can experience
justification; it is not an experience.
Now our sins that have been forgiven at the point of justification, of
which most of us, probably all of us will never consciously realize until we
get to heaven and really see what our record looks like. So justification concerns that which is not
observable, it’s something that happened in heaven and if we were there we
could hear it pass but we’re not in heaven and we can’t get a tap on what it
is; it’s not an experience.
So therefore how does God make justification real to the believer? Every time we confess our sins, that’s how He
makes it empirically real in your life.
Justification, if you were never forgiven, would mean nothing to
you. Justification only means something
to you if you know your sins at this moment are cleansed, and this moment you
have access to God. When you have that
certainty then you know what justification is, even though the justification
legally has occurred once and for all, experientially God reveals it every time
He forgives us of our sins. So
restoration from being out of fellowship is a revelation of justification. And constantly God reveals that once and for
all act, over and over and over again.
Now “thou shalt not die” means that David hears forgiveness; “thou shalt
not die” means that now he can rest assured he’s not under condemnation, but
that’s only one part of what Nathan speaks.
He says on the one hand God has forgiven you and you won’t die, but
here’s the other hand, verse 14.
“However, on the other hand, because by this deed you have given great
occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born
unto you shall surely die.” Now we have
to adjust the translation slightly, it’s difficult at this point, because the
verb, “you have given great occasion to blaspheme” is really the verb to
despised, “you have despised.” Despised
what? And that causes the problem because you would think Nathan would be
saying you have despised the Lord, but that’s not the way the sentence
reads. It says “you’ve despised the
enemies of the Lord,” well wait a minute; what does it mean he has despised the
enemies, it’s easy to understand if he despised the Lord because then you can
say okay, I see that, I see where David rejected God’s promise and because he
rejected God’s promise therefore he despised God; I can see that.
But what does it mean when it says “you have despised the enemies of the
Lord.” All right, remember how David got
out of fellowship to begin with? Think
way back, what was the first sign of his being out of fellowship. Wasn’t it that he had failed to lead the
armies into battle in the Ammonite campaign.
In other words, he was neglecting his job to conquer in the name of
Jehovah. He had neglected to conquer, he
had neglected and despised the enemies that needed conquering; he has turned it
over to his Lieutenants, turned it over to Joab, turned it over to somebody
else, they can take care of it. In other
words, he has discounted his opponents, and God said David, that’s where you
made your big mistake; you have despised those whom you should have conquered,
you have despised the mission you were given as king. What was the king? The savior, the one who would deliver the
nation from captivity, from the Philistines and the other world powers. And David therefore despised not the Lord, he
despised the Lord but the sentence emphasizes he despised the enemies of the
Lord. Because “you have despised the
enemies of the Lord, therefore,” see, going all the way back to that primary
sin, “therefore the child that is born must die,” the way the Hebrew verb is
constructed the word “die” in verse 14 [small blank spot] under no condition
will this child be permitted to live.
Now this brings out the poignancy of the whole confession of David and
the timing of Nathan and the timing of the Lord and how it all worked
together. You see, for fifteen to
eighteen months David had been steadily out of fellowship. For the nine months since he committed
adultery with Bathsheba he was out of it, all those nine months. He was out of it after the baby was born, but
when the baby was born, that’s when Nathan came to him, because now the fruit
of his sin was visible, and God is going to take the fruit of his sin and show
that it too must be removed. The sin is
forgiven but its fruit must be destroyed.
God will not tolerate that; it must be removed.
And then something else comes in about the death of this child that must
have stabbed David in the heart, was the fact that as he watched the child, it
died a very slow death, for seven days that baby died slowly before David. That baby suffered and David had to watch
that baby suffer a slow death. Now what
do you suppose must have gone through David’s mind, particularly when he
recalled verse 13 and 14 together? What
had Nathan said before he announced the baby would die? You will not die. Now what thought do you think that must have
left in David’s mind for those seven days?
My death has been transferred to that baby. That baby is suffering vicariously for
me. There was a substitution, the
suffering was removed from my life but it was passed from the infant, look what
I have done.
And in this we have a picture of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus
Christ. No person illuminated by the
Holy Spirit correctly can ever view the cross of Jesus Christ without at the
same time thinking similarly about Christ as David must have thought about that
baby dying, that my death made that baby suffer. And when you look at the cross of Christ, we
take communion and we commemorate it, this thought ought to be foremost in our
minds, when Christ died He was dying for us; the death that we should have
experienced Christ experienced. So when
we sin we are the ones who cause Christ to suffer historically. And David had this transfer, this vicarious
suffering, very graphically brought to mind for six to seven days as he watched
his baby die.
And then verse 15 simply says Nathan concluded his counsel and he left
and went home. “And Nathan departed unto
his house. And the LORD struck the child
that Uriah’s wife bore unto David, and it was very sick.” And beginning at verse 16 we encounter two
great doctrines of Scripture, the doctrine of how to pray, and the doctrine
more particularly how to pray in times of sickness. And we get good insight from this struggle
that David had for six or seven days while he watched his child die because
David is going to apply certain prayer principles. And God is going to answer those principles
and out of those principles you can get a picture of correct prayer under times
of physical illness, prayer which, by the way, is nothing like some of the
divine healers and so on. Here we’re
going to see true Biblical prayer.
Verse 16, it says “David, therefore, besought God for the child,” now
that’s the most important part about all the praying that David did. Notice it does not say David petitioned
God. The Hebrew has a word for ask, but
that verb isn’t used here, strangely; strange isn’t it? Isn’t it strange that it doesn’t say David
asked God for the child. Now the reason
he didn’t ask God for the child is because he didn’t faith to ask God for the
child. Why didn’t David have faith to
ask God for the child? Because what had
the prophet just told him, the last revealed information he had gotten from God
was that it was an irrevocable sentence that the child must suffer and die.
That was the last thought from God, transmitted into history, meeting David’s
brain. Therefore on the basis of that
David can’t sit out here and say oh, I got to work up faith, I got to work up
faith, I got to work up faith. That is
not faith; that’s fanaticism. And faith
can’t be worked up. You can sit here and
read Psalms, you can sing songs, you can do anything but you cannot work up
faith. Faith comes by intellectually perceiving God’s Word, plus of course,
believing it. But it’s got to be
rational and it’s got to be perceived.
And David does not have faith to ask God for that child’s life at this
time, in the sense of asking by perfect faith; he can’t prayer the faith. He can’t say God raise the child up. He has no right because he’s not sure that’s
God’s will for the child. So therefore
not being able to pray certainly for the healing of the child, he does the next
thing, and the next thing instead of praying directly for the healing of the
child is to beseech God, or seek God.
Now the word “seek” means intensively search. The other word is to ask, it’s Saul’s name
incidentally. The other word is baqash and baqash means to intensively probe and search, and this describes
how David reacted in this kind of situation in his life. What is he probing and searching?
All right, let’s skip temporarily to verse 22, he explains what he’s
doing. “And he said, While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept; for I
said, Who can tell whether God will be gracious to me,” in other words, David
had an aggressive concept of prayer that God can be affected and moved by
petition, as Moses in Exodus 33 and other passages. Even though God had said death, David probed
God’s very character to see if God would be gracious and grant that the death
be transferred somewhere else and the life saved. So he was probing God for grace is what he
was doing. Now he had to do this before
he could pray for any healing by faith.
He couldn’t pray for healing by faith because he didn’t know God’s will,
so he had to pray first for God’s will and this is the very to seek, he
constantly sought it. Now as we’re going
to see, he never got beyond this. David
could never pray, all during these seven days, for healing for his son; he
never had the faith to do it. Reason: it
wasn’t God’s will. It’s very simple.
So he “sought God for the child, and David fasted,” the two verbs, the
key verbs in the sentence, he “sought” or he searched and he “fasted.” Now why he fasted, as we’ll see later on, is
because fasting is a time when you can concentrate and pray of this kind
demands great concentration. Now I’m not
sure all that is involved, all I do know is that when men in the Bible are
faced with great trials, when they begin to pray intensively they fast. Now this is different from some of you
thinking of lent and giving up bubble gum or something for forty days, it’s not
talking about that kind of fasting. That
isn’t true fasting, that’s asceticism.
Now don’t confuse asceticism with Biblical fasting. In Biblical fasting… it’s like something that
you’ve all probably done at one time or another; at one time or another you
were probably watching a football game or something and you forgot to eat, or
you’ve been involved in some activity and you haven’t had time to eat.
Now if you can mentally recreate what you were thinking of, generally
you were thinking I’m too busy to bother with it right now. All right, that’s the mentality of Biblical
fasting. See, that’s not asceticism,
you’re not saying boy, I’ll enjoy this football game if I just don’t eat
lunch. Nobody would think that way; the
not eating of lunch would have nothing to do with your enjoyment of the
football game. One the other hand, you
may be enjoying the football game so much that you don’t have time or don’t
want to eat lunch. That reverse attitude
is proper attitude Biblical fasting. It
may also have something to do with the body, it may be that the human spirit
has greater freedom in the body when the body’s energy is not being used for
digestion of food. But in some way
fasting is a consistent thing here for intense periods of prayer.
Now the last three verbs in verse 16 tell us a lot about what happened
in this time because of the tense.
Here’s where knowledge of original languages really helps in seeing the
text. All these verbs are in the
imperfect akionsart, meaning they are habitual.
The first two verbs are not; the first two verbs describe the whole
period of seven days. David prayed and
he fasted. Now the next three verbs
describe actions that he did each day.
He would go in, if you want to translate it properly it would be “he
would go in each day, and he would lay all night upon the earth.” Literally it reads as three verbs, “he would
go in, he would spent the night, and he would lay on the earth.” It’s a period of prostration that he would do
every night. In other words, David did
not sleep for seven days, his prayer was so intense. For seven days he went without food; for
seven days he went without sleep, to petition that this sentence that he had
caused to come about would not fall upon his son. Now this shows you something about David’s
character, you can tell he’s back in fellowship here. David’s roaring on all cylinders as we meet
him in the Psalms. This is that prayer
life of David that was lost for so many months; not its back, and it’s coming,
it’s crashing through each day he’s doing this.
And he would go in and he’d lay all night.
And finally in verse 17, “And the elders of his house arose,” the
servants, “and went to him, to raise him up from the earth, but he would not,
neither did he eat with them. [18] And it came to pass on the seventh day, that
the child died. And the servants of
David feared to tell him that the child was dead; for they said, Behold, while
the child was yet alive, we spoke unto him, and he would not hearken unto our
voice; how will he then vex himself if we tell him that the child is
dead.” Now no extra charge for this but
there’s a principle in verse 18-19 that I see violated time and time again in
hospitals and with people who are sick, with medical personnel, and with people
who survive loved ones who are in terminal sickness. You will notice here, the servants used the
usual thing, “don’t tell him they’re dying.”
You see this again and again, someone has cancer, someone is dying of
sickness, oh we’re not going to tell them it might upset them. It’s going to upset them a lot more when they
die and they haven’t had time to prepare for it. Don’t you ever go to that cop out, we’re not
going to tell them because they might get upset. Go ahead and tell them the truth. If a person is dying they have a right to
know they’re dying; that is their right to know. Do you think God wants people to leave this
life in the most momentous decision of all, without warning. Of course the warning is going to upset them,
but the warning isn’t going to upset them half as much as dying without a
possible chance to believe in Jesus Christ.
So communication of the truth to a dying person is important because it
lets them know they only have a limited time to live and therefore things have
to get straightened out between them and God.
You are not helping anyone by withholding information of death, no
matter how much it upsets them, it is your prerogative to tell them.
So they try to cop out, and obviously, verse 19, David knows it. “But when David saw that his servants
whispered,” it’s a hithpael participle, it means they were going around the
house whispering to one another, it’s a participle meaning it was going on all
the time. And this obviously shows you
something else and if you haven’t been around sick people you can’t appreciate
it, but if you have you know this, you can’t keep that truth from
somebody. People who are dying sort of
intuitively know it, and all you are doing by withholding information from a
dying person is you are destroying communication. You walk in, oh well how is the weather today
and so on, and all the trivial things instead of getting down to the truth,
they’re dying. That’s the truth. What usually happens, people say oh, we might
upset them, I don’t want them to worry.
So you come on with a phony conversation and actually they should be
into the Word. If you told them, all
right, they’re upset because they know they’re going to die, it is very
upsetting to know, it’s the most upsetting thing to know but it would give them
an opportunity to go to the Word, to pray about it, to get dying grace, the
peace of the Lord that passes all understanding.
David saw that his servants were whispering so he knew something was
going on, you can’t hide this kind of stuff from people. “But when David saw that his servants
whispered, David perceived that the child was dead. Therefore David said unto his servants, Is
the child dead? And they said, He is
dead. [20] And David arose from the
earth, and washed, and anointed himself,” that alone tells us something about
the intensity of his prayer. The words
“wash” and “anoint” was used every morning when they got up, washing is washing
and anointing is putting on after shave lotion and so on. This shows you that David had not bathed in
seven days. He hadn’t eaten in seven
days. He hadn’t shaved in seven
days. He was a mess physically. This is the full-orbed concentration of
David’s prayer.
Unless you see these things you lose the whole thing here, the fact that
this man is praying his heart out before God, constantly seeking whether it’s
God’s will or not in this situation. So
he sees them, and then he gets up, and he washes himself, “and changed his
apparel, and came into the house of the LORD, and worshiped.” Do you know why he went there first? The first place he went after he got up and
washed. Why did he go to the house of
God? To thank God for His will. You see, for this long time what had David
been doing? For seven days he’s been,
not praying the prayer of faith, he couldn’t.
But he was praying God is it your will, make it known to me what your
will is in this situation, is my son going to die. And for seven days no answer came. In other words, for seven days God withheld
information and communicated his will finally by the act of death itself. So sometimes you can pray for someone who’s
dying and you can pray and pray and pray and you’ll never receive the answer
until the time they literally die. This
was an answer.
And so when he goes to the temple and goes to the house of the Lord, he
worships. Do you know why he does
this? Because David, back in fellowship,
knows what is the fundamental mental attitude of the Christian? Thankfulness, and he’s got to go to the
temple because he’s got to pray out before God, probably with means of
sacrifice of praise and other things, he prays and he announces before God I do
not have resentment in my heart over this no answer to prayer, I accept your no
answer to prayer God, and I give you thanks for it. It was tough for him to do, he’d just been
through seven days of very terrible type of suffering. But he gives thanks and that’s critical, very
critical. If he did not go to the house
of the Lord and worship in verse 20 he would have been back out of
fellowship. He had to be able to give
thanks at this point.
[20b] “Then he came to his own house; and when he required, they set
food before him, and he did eat.” Now
the servants, operating at this point on human viewpoint, cannot believe it
because as usual when someone is dying and someone is involved in this
situation, everybody else is operating on the basis of their emotions. And so they’re around worrying about this and
that, and whispering this and that and so on, and now they see him rejoice,
just when, according to their human viewpoint scale, he should be in
depression. David knows the correct
doctrine of death in the Scripture, and it’s been my experience in funerals
that people who have not been exposed to Scripture show it most at that
point. [21, “Then said his servants unto
him, What thing is this that thou hast done? Thou didst fast and weep for the
child, while it was alive; but when the child was dead, thou didst rise and
eat.”]
So in verse 22 he explains to them, and this is one of the great classic
doctrines on death; it also is going to teach about the age of accountability
and are infants saved, and the passage also is going to tell us about
procedures for praying for sickness. So
it’s a very important passage. “And he
said, While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, Who can
tell whether God will be gracious to me, that the child may live.” Now in the Hebrew “can tell” is a participle
and it doesn’t really mean tell, it means know.
It is the participle that means a knower, and he’s saying “who is the
knower,” who with a finite mind is a knower of God’s will. Even Nathan, he’s
still finite, he doesn’t know all of God’s will. God has to reveal Himself even to Nathan the
prophet. So he’s saying “who is a
knower, that God might be gracious.”
Let’s look at it this way; one of God’s attributes is that He is
omniscient, He is sovereign, and He is love.
These are some of God’s attributes.
Now in the mind of God may be behind His sentence of doom there might be
room for a little more grace. Now look
at David’s mentality, I want you to watch what he’s doing here. You see how these guys, they chase grace all
over the world, they chase grace all the way up to the throne. David is insistent for seven days, can God
show just a little bit of grace, and he persists day after day after day after
day. What do you suppose drives David to do that? Emotions?
Huh-un, his good doctrine. It
shows you another thing that should be encouraging to some of you. David’s coming out of a long toulies trip and
when he comes out the doctrine he learned before starts moving. All during the time he’s out of fellowship he
has trouble applying it but he didn’t lose it all, it came back to him and here
he’s beginning to use it once again, seeking grace. And he’s saying no man…
here’s Nathan, here’s David, here are some other people down on earth, not one
of them has a tap on what’s in God’s mind.
So David can’t go to Nathan, David has to shoot directly to God, and he
has to keep saying God, is there room enough in this situation to take that
sentence as you moved it off my shoulders and move it off the shoulders of my
son. Will You be gracious there. And you can tell that he did it for seven
days, he still had hope there might be that sort of grace available. And that’s
what he’s saying here, he says I was trying to seek grace all that time. All that time, that explains my behavior, he
tells these people. I was pursuing,
hunting, thirsting after God’s grace.
Verse 23, “But now he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to
me.” And with that we have one of the great sentences in God’s Word. That sentence in God’s Word reveals the
problem of what about children who die before the age of accountability. Now it’s often said no, that sentence
doesn’t teach that because that child was a child of the covenant, and since he
was a covenant child, that is, he was circumcised (they would argue) because he
was a covenant child he therefore was on his way to heaven because of the faith
of his father. There’s only one problem,
he wasn’t a covenant child; circumcision didn’t happen until the eighth
day. The child was named and circumcised
on the eight day; this child died on the seventh day; he never got a name and
he was never circumcised. And therefore
he was never legally brought into the covenant.
So this is not a covenant child, so you can’t say that this is a special
case. This is a general case of all
infants who die before the age of accountability.
David answers, “I shall go to him,” now David is a saved individual;
therefore where he’d go is the place where his son had gone before him. “I shall go to him, but he shall not return
to me.” So that teaches that this infant
of his was saved. Now how, don’t ask me,
that’s the big problem. How can a
responsible being, even a child, have the atonement of Christ applied to them.
Don’t ask me, all we can do is base it on the Scriptures. Obviously you have to argue verse 23 teaches
that child was saved. It’s not just
talking about the child’s dying. Some
people say well it just means that David is going to die along with the kid. Well, would that give consolation to the
father? He wants to see his son, and
what has he been praying for in verse 22?
He wants to see his son. So what
consolation would it be in verse 23 to interpret it oh well, he’s dead and I’m
going to die too. That just doesn’t fit
the whole spirit of the passage. The
spirit of the passage is David wants to know his son and so we know that verse
23 does teach that that child is saved.
Why? Again, he is not circumcised
so you can’t say this is a special case of a covenant child. Secondly, it is
not just referring to death, it’s referring to paradise; David goes to
paradise, the place of the Old Testament saints after death, and the child is
there to meet him.
Now we have to stop here a moment and apply something. Let’s see if we can get some sort of
procedure in about praying for illness.
We have people ill on our prayer list, so let’s get some principles
about praying in cases of illness. We’ll
state these principles as though it applies to us personally, that we are the
ones that are sick.
The first response in a case of illness is to go back to the categories
of suffering. Start back with the
categories; categories one, two, three, four, five and six. There are definite reasons why Christians
suffer, it doesn’t happen by accident.
So the first response you have toward illness is not just oh well, I’m
sick today, chalk it up to chance.
Sickness can’t be due to chance, it has to be due to a reason. You may not be able to find the reason but at
least try. In other words, what you’re
really asking, is there … you know category one is the fall, so that’s known
and that doesn’t help you too much. So let’s go to category two,
rebellion. So obviously one question you
ought to ask yourself, if rebellion is involved find out, maybe that’s the
case. Maybe you could save yourself a
whole heap in medical bills by simply confessing sin. So check and see whether it’s
discipline. Three, check out those with
whom you’re associated, is this a general discipline that falls upon your
family for something that’s going on in that family that’s not right? Could this possibly be, some association of
divine institutions. Could it possibly
be something in your marriage relationship that isn’t right? Is this possibly due to suffering.
Four, it could be animosity, a simple satanic attack against you because
of something you have obediently done for God.
It could be that you have had an opportunity right in front of you to
witness for Jesus Christ, to share some doctrine with somebody, and all of a
sudden you come down sick, just before you have an opportunity to minister to
someone. Now is that just an
accident? No, that’s just Satan trying
to hinder you. That might be a source of
problem. The fifth and sixth thing, it
might be a case where God wants you to learn a truth, where there’s some
doctrine you haven’t yet got a mature understanding of. Perhaps there’s some truth of appreciating a
promise in God’s Word. Is that a reason
for the suffering. And then finally the
sixth reason, is there somebody watching that this is going to be a testimony
to, they’re heard the gospel, they’ve heard you tell them but they’re not going
to believe it until they see it in action.
And when you can tolerate sickness and suffering in your life and give
God that thanks, that speaks to a lot of people. So you have a checklist to run through; this
at least starts you moving. It gets you
out of this oh well, just chance kind of thing and move on, give me a
pill. That concept; it gets you thinking
that the sickness is not an accident.
Another suggestion, as you do this pray for insight. Psalm 139, “Search me, O God, and know my
heart,” pray for insight. Why is this
sometimes necessary? Because often times
the truth is staring us in the face and we’re just too rebellious to see
it. And often times it takes a little portion
of grace thrown in, hey God, if it’s really right here open my eyes, clean my
glasses or do something so I see it, illumination.
Another point, if it is sin, if you’ve become aware and the Holy Spirit
impresses some sin on your conscience, confess it, 1 John 1:9. Use it, nobody else can for you, you have
to. If, after confessing your sin it
involves someone else and it involves some sort of a nagging situation where
you just don’t get any freedom from guilt by confessing it, the guilt seems to
be residual sort of thing that won’t go away, you can’t forgive this person or
some other problem, deal with it, maybe some follow-up action is needed.
Another point in this procedure in facing illness, be open to the fact
that God can answer your prayers through many different ways; it doesn’t have
to be miraculous to be an answer to prayer.
In James 5 it’s talking about anointing with oil and the word there is
like with the good Samaritan, it means with medicine. So be open to the fact that it’s just as much
a prayer for a doctor to use his wisdom… after all, don’t think of medical
science as divorced from God’s word. What do you suppose would be the Jewish
name for medical science? Chokmah, it falls under wisdom. All right, what’s wrong with using wisdom,
isn’t all wisdom from God whether it’s in the hands of a believer or
unbeliever, it doesn’t matter. It it’s
wisdom its wisdom and wisdom comes from God.
So what’s wrong with using wisdom.
So be open to the fact that God can answer the prayer through medical
sickness. Don’t go off on the Mary Baker
Eddy thing and think it’s not illness or something else. God uses medical science and that is the
norm; sometimes it’s miraculous, most of the time it is not. And it’s foolish to insist that God is going
to do this miraculously when He’s given doctors to solve the problem. That’s just an act of rebellion is what it
is, I’m going to dictate to God how He’s going to answer my prayer.
The last point we learn from this passage, be open to a “no” answer. Don’t think it’s a lack of faith. One of the cheapest tricks in Christianity is
to say oh so and so didn’t get healed because he didn’t have faith; that is a
cheap trick, it is a cruel statement, very cruel statement to make. Don’t ever
get wrapped up in that kind of thing.
God can say no. Do you know
why? Because ultimately He says no to at
least one prayer, or at least one physical suffering; we’re all going to die,
so at least there’s going to be one time in your life He’s going to say
no. Why?
Point 1 of suffering, we live in a fallen world. The curse of Adam cannot be ultimately
reversed. We can only go out of it,
through it by resurrection, that’s the only way around it.
Let’s finish the passage, we have two more verses, David’s
response. For seven days he’s prayed,
now he gets up, he explains his behavior to his servants. Verse 24, “And David comforted Bathsheba,
his wife,” and you realize that verse 24 is the first place in the text where
he does anything for Bathsheba. Up to
now he’s used her, this is the first time David apparently ever has any
affection for his wife, Bathsheba, at least that’s the only time the Holy
Spirit shows there’s any affection here.
Now why do you suppose David could no exercise affection toward his
wife, whereas he didn’t before when he was so out of it. What made the difference? We can’t really know everything that went on
in David’s head but can’t you use a little imagination and think of what must
have transpired between him and Bathsheba for those seven days; David’s there
on the floor day after day after day, petitioning for his son, and realizing
that was caused… he had a long time, seven days is a long time when you spend
24 hours of each day up thinking, it’s a long time. And don’t you suppose for those many, many
hours it must have dawned on him, what have I done, what have I done, what have
I done, what have I done, what have I done.
And now after it’s all over and God deals with the problem, where does
he go? He goes back to Bathsheba and he
comforts here. See, he’s back in
fellowship, he’s moving.
“And David comforted Bathsheba, his wife, and went in unto her, and lay
with her; and she bore a son, and he called his name Solomon; and the LORD
loved him.” Now the naming of Solomon is
important; this is a summary statement, it doesn’t mean they had sex right
away, it just is a summary statement, “he lay with her, and she bore a son, and
called his name Solomon.” The name
Solomon looks like this, Soloma is
really the way it looks, and the Hebrew word for peace looks like this, slm, supplying the vowels, shalom.
Now why is Solomon called peace?
What has David just been through for 18 months? The opposite of peace, this constant turmoil
in his life, that God wasn’t pleased with that son, that son couldn’t sit on
the throne, it was a fruit of David’s own works. If there was going to be a seed that
succeeded David by the Davidic Covenant it had to be by grace, and here’s a son
now that qualifies, and that’s why it says “and the LORD loved him.” “Him” is not David, “him” is Solomon. Why does it say the Lord loved Solomon? Because it means that God is now reconciled
to the house of David, the seed is going to survive, the Davidic Covenant can
progress in history, there is going to be someone who is David’s male heir who
is acceptable before God.
“The Lord loved him.” And by the
way, the story from 2 Samuel 13 all the way to 1 Kings 2 can be explained by
three words, “the Lord loved him,” because you’re never going to meet Solomon
again in this book. Solomon passes off
the stage, never to be spoken of again as long as David’s reign is in
vogue. Three other sons take the stage
and from all the human point of view and the rough and tumble of life and
confusion and the word spoken, everybody forgets the Lord loved Solomon. And everybody is thinking about [can’t
understand who], he’s the man, he has a great political movement, there’s lots
of noise, and people think of Absalom and he leads a great revolt against his
father, surely Absalom is king, lots of noise, lots of propaganda, lots of
attention. But behind it is this quiet
“God loves Solomon.” And all the
political shenanigans we’re about to see from chapter 13 through the end of 2
Samuel collapse; one son after another dies as a result of political accidents
until finally we get to 1 Kings 2 and all of a sudden the curtain opens and
who’s standing there? A young boy by the
name of Solomon, with a special gift from God, perfectly qualified for the
throne. And for years and years it’s
been all this political intrigue, assassination, murder, rape, confusion, but
behind it all God’s man was waiting in the vestibule. And he’s going to come on stage years
later. So this is the last we hear of
him.
We want to ask one more question of the text; how does David know that
the Lord loved Solomon, after all, I just told you that Solomon isn’t going to
appear for many, many years from now.
The empirical evidence isn’t going to be in, so how can David conclude
now, here, at this point, when the kid is just born, that God loved
Solomon. How can he conclude that when
it’s not going to be obvious that God loved Solomon for many, many years hence,
when all the other competitors to the throne are dead and Solomon emerges to
take over.
The last verse, verse 25 in this section, is how he knew. “And he sent by the hand of Nathan,”
interpreters wonder what the subject is, well what’s the subject of the last
thing you read in verse 24? “Lord,” so
who’s the “he” in verse 25? The
Lord. “And the Lord send word by the
hand of Nathan, the prophet; and he called his name Jedidiah, because of the
LORD.” Now Jedidiah was part of
Solomon’s tutelary, a tutelary is a list of names that kings have, and Jedidiah
is Jedidah, and didah means to have affection, and Je is Jehovah. Nathan walks
in, probably at the time of circumcision on the 8th day and he gives
David the name of his son; the prophet, the spokesman for God comes with direct
verbal revelation, and that’s what gave David the assurance that Solomon was
beloved. That’s why David could now
relax, so to speak, in a promise. See
it’s always by promise, just like Abraham, grace is always centered on
promises, and faith in those promises.
Next week we’ll deal with what happens as a result of this working out
in David’s family. He’s not going to be free of the suffering but the base has
been set; when everything looks like it’s going to collapse, Solomon is there,
the Davidic Covenant, God’s promise, will remain true.
Shall we pray.
[26, “And Joab fought against Rabbah, of the children of Ammon, and took
the royal city. [27] And Joab sent
messengers to David, and said, I have fought against Rabbah, and have taken the
city of waters. [28] Now, therefore, gather the rest of the people together, and
encamp against the city, and take it, lest I take the city, and it be called
after my name. [29] And David gathered
all the people together, and went to Rabbah, and fought against it, and took
it. [30] And he took their king’s crown
from his head, the weight of which was a talent of gold with the precious
stones; and it was set on David’s head.
And he brought forth the spoil of the city in great abundance. [31] And
he brought forth the people who were in it, and put them to labor with saws,
and with harrows of iron, and with axes of iron, and made them toil at the
brickkiln. This did he unto all the
cities of the children of Ammon. So
David and all the people returned unto