SPROUL: One of my favorite things is to read. I’m
addicted to reading, a voracious reader. I’m one of those people who has to always have
something to read. If I’m sitting at the breakfast table, and there’s no newspaper
there or book to read, I’m reading the nutrients, ingredients on the cereal box. I have to read.
I love to read. And one of the things I love to read are novels and mystery stories and
things like that. But here’s what I find out. If I pick up a book to read, I can’t
read three pages in that book until I’m flipping back to the inside back cover page,
not to read the end of the story. I don’t do that. But I want to see if there’s a
picture and any biographical data of the author. Why do I do that? Because I’m just fascinated
to see what the person looks like, where they live, and so on, who has written this book,
because I understand that the more I can discover about the author of the book, the more that
helps me to understand the perspective that person brings to their work. And that’s
what I want to do today. We’re concerned about repentance. We’re going to be spending time looking
very carefully at the 51st Psalm, which was written by David. And since David is the author
of that psalm, in order for us to understand the intensity of the passion that he is expressing
in that psalm, I want to look a little bit at the man who wrote the psalm and the circumstances
under which this psalm was originally composed. I mean, it would take many, many weeks for
us to give a complete overview of the life of David. He is obviously one of the most
important persons in the entire Old Testament. He is the one who Jesus refers to as David’s
son, and Jesus is David’s son and David’s Lord. David is the one who -- gives the promise
that his fallen house will be restored and that there would come a King like him. And
that prophecy is fulfilled in the person of Christ, who is born of the seed of David.
And of course, in the history of the monarchy in the Old Testament, David is conceded to
be far and away the greatest of the Jewish kings. He extended the borders of the land
from Dan to Beersheba and gave them their period of prosperity and presided over what
was called the Golden Age of Israel. And not only was he a great king, but he was probably,
perhaps next to Joshua, the greatest warrior that the Old Testament ever produced. And
so he was a warrior king as well. And not only that, he was a poet and a musician, a
statesman. He was truly a Renaissance man, before there was ever such a thing as a Renaissance. And so this person is extremely interesting
and fascinating as a human being. And one of the most important epitaphs we hear about
David is that he was called a man after God’s own heart. He was a man that God really loved.
And yet in addition to the wonderful exploits that are recorded in the name of David and
the passion of his spiritual life, which is expressed throughout the Psalms, not just
in Psalm 51, David is also remembered for being one of the worst offenders of the Law
of God in Biblical history. That David’s fall into sin is as dramatic as his great
exploits were in the other direction. And we read of that case in his history where,
while he was, uh, king, he went out onto his balcony of his palace, and he looked across
the way, and he saw this beautiful woman bathing on her rooftop, assuming that she was bathing
in private. And David saw this woman in her nakedness and was overcome with sensuous lust,
and he just had to have this woman, and so he sent his messengers and summoned her to
the royal palace and entered into an adulterous relationship with this woman, Bathsheba. And
David was so intoxicated with his affections for this woman that even though the woman
was married to another man, David would not let that stop him from gratifying his own
desire. And so this obstacle to his affection, this
husband of Bathsheba was one of the loyal servants in David’s army. And so David made
arrangements with Uriah’s commander to have Uriah placed at the very front of the frontlines,
where he would be in harm’s way. Where he would be most likely to be slain in battle.
And that’s exactly what happened. David had Uriah setup, so that Uriah, while he was
defending David, was killed. And still David continues his relationship with this woman,
until God sends His messenger to David, and we read of that account in the 12th chapter
of II Samuel, where the text reads as follows, “Then the Lord sent Nathan to David, and
he came to him and said to him, ‘There were two men in one city...’” Now, what Nathan
is doing here is he’s coming to the king, and he’s going to tell a parable to David.
Say, king, what about this? “There were two men in one city. One was rich, and the
other one was poor. And the rich man had exceedingly many flocks and herds. But the poor man had
nothing, except one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished and it grew up
together with him and with his children. It ate of his own food, drank from his own cup,
lay in his bosom, and was like a daughter to him.” So the poor man has one little
lamb. And that little lamb is so precious to him, that he lets the lamb live in the
house with him. He eats from his table. He drinks from his cup. And he holds him to his
bosom as he expresses his affection for this single sheep. “And a traveler came to the
rich man, who refused to take from his own flock and from his own herd to prepare one
for the wayfaring man who had come to him; but instead he took the poor man’s lamb
and prepared it for the man who had come to him.” This is the story, and David reacts to this
story with fury. He’s enraged by this obvious manifestation of injustice. And what does
he say? “David’s anger was greatly aroused against the man, and he said to Nathan, ‘as
the Lord lives...’” He swears and oath here. “As the Lord lives the man who has
done this shall surely die. And he shall restore fourfold for the lamb, because he did this
thing and because he had no pity.” He was a thief. He robbed from a poor man. He took
that man’s most prized possession when he didn’t even need it, because he himself
was rich beyond measure, and he was heartless. He didn’t care at all for the plight of
this man. All he cared for was his own convenience and his own satisfaction. And so David hears
this and he said, “Not in my kingdom. You find somebody like that in my kingdom, he
dies. He shall surely be put to death, but not until he restores fourfold what he was
stolen from this poor man.” And then Nathan said to David, “You are the man. Thou art
the man, David. And thus says the Lord God of Israel, ‘I anointed you king over Israel.
I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave you your master’s house and your master’s
wives into your keeping. I gave you the whole house of Israel and of Judah, and if that
had been too little, David, I also would have given you much more. Why have you then despised
the commandment of the Lord to do evil in His sight? You have killed Uriah the Hittite
with the sword. You have taken his wife to be your wife, and you have killed him with
the sword of the people of Ammon. Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house,
and because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be
your wife. And thus says the Lord, behold I will raise up adversity against you from
your own house.” Let me just stop there at that point. Several
years ago I was in Israel. I was there the week Anwar Sadat was assassinated. The same
week Moshe Dayan, one of the greatest heroes of modern Israel, died. And I was staying
on the Mount of Olives overlooking the old city of Jerusalem, and I went out on my balcony
one night. And I was standing there looking out over the valley of Kidron from the Mount
of Olives, looking into the old city of Jerusalem. And if you go there today and you see the
walls that are left from ancient Jerusalem, you realize that even before that walled city
that was there in Jesus day – in fact, by the time Jesus came to Jerusalem it was already
a city that was a thousand years old and it was already a tourist attraction in the ancient
world. But the old, old city was to the left of that from my observation post, which was
David’s city. And as I was standing there it was like I was conjuring up images of Old
Testament history realizing I’m standing in the spot where if 3,000 years ago somebody
was standing here they could have looked down across that valley and seen shadowy figures
sneaking out of the old, old city and down into the valley trying to escape the attack
of rebels. And I see David fleeing in fear from the armies of his own son Absalom. And I stood there and said, “This – here
is where it happened.” The fulfillment of the very prophecy that Nathan spoke to David,
that the sword would not depart from his own family. And he says here, “The sword shall
never depart from your house because you have despised me, and because you have taken the
wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. And thus I will raise up adversity against
you, from your own house, from your own son. And I will take your wives before your eyes
and give them to your neighbor and he shall lie with your wives in the light of the sun.
You did it secretly David, but I will do all of this thing before all of Israel before
the sun.” I wonder how David felt if he would know that the actions of his sin and
selfishness would be recorded not only for all of Israel to know, but for the whole world
to know for all time. You talk about wearing a scarlet letter, the letter “A” blazoned
on your chest for adultery. Here it is, with David. Now my question is this, how does David respond?
See he had fallen into sin not because he with malice of forethought decided to go out
and look for another woman. He just happened to see her, peradventure through a matter
of circumstances. He was a man he had biological drives. He could say to God, “God what did
you expect me to do, I’m a man. I’ve got male hormones. I’ve seen the most beautiful
woman in the world taking a bath right across the way from me, at nighttime. What’d you
want me to do? Turn and run, like Joseph?” God would say yes, that’s what I want you
to do. To flee from that. But you didn’t David. You allowed lust to burn in your heart.
And you began to pour new fuel on the flames of your heart. You embraced your sin. You
nurtured your sin. And even though at first it made you sick because you knew you were
violating everything sacred and everything holy. You kept at your sin. Who does that
sound like? This is not an isolated experience in human
corruption, ladies and gentlemen. We are the people. We are the men. We are the woman who
are guilty of this same kind of behavior. Of nurturing sin and staying with that sin,
and saying within ourselves, and saying all ways in which we can justify it, and make
our evil sound like it’s actually good. This is our nature as fallen people. And I’m
sure David played that game every step of the way. He had to justify his sin to his
own conscience. And he allowed his heart to become hardened by repetition of sin. How
many times does the Bible speak about the hardening of the heart. The heart gets callouses
from over use. People who work hard with their hands get callouses on their hands. They don’t
get them the first time they work. The first time they work they get blisters. They hurt.
But if they keep working at the same work, those blisters turn to callouses, those blisters
turn to callouses, and they become hard, and they are inured from pain. And that’s what
we do with our consciences. We allow callouses to form on our conscience, so that the conscience
becomes seared. And when we would hear the voice of conscience telling us to stop this
behavior, we repress that, we quiet it, we seek friends who will comfort us, and we say
it’s ok. That’s what David was doing when he was
so smitten for his affection for Bathsheba that he didn’t even see Uriah, except he
didn’t see Uriah as a humble human being. He didn’t see Uriah as a servant of the
king. He saw Uriah as an own obstacle to his own lust. And while he was doing that, he
wasn’t sitting there thinking, “You know, God did some things for me, but look at how
good I’ve been to God. I mean after all, he anointed me king, and Saul tried to kill
me. And instead of letting me ascend to the throne, which I should have, I spent all those
years as a fugitive running around the desert while Saul was trying to kill me. I mean if
God was really going to be gracious he would have made me king. And look what I did for
Israel. They were on the brink of defeat, and they were all intimidated by the giant
Goliath, until I went up against this giant. I was the one who had enough courage to slay
the giant and cause victory for my people over the Philistines. You would think all
I’ve done for God and all I’ve done for Israel, that he’d let me have a few breaks
here. Let me have the object of my affections. He wouldn’t take away from me the woman
I love most and put her in the hands of this insignificant private in the army. Well I
think I’m justified to get rid of him.” That’s the way he was thinking, until God
sent Nathan. ‘Til God came with the word of God, and the word of God was accompanied
by the Spirit of God, because it is the Spirit of God who along with the word of God that
has the power to use the sword to slice into your soul and to divide between bone and marrow,
and to convict you of righteousness and of sin. Ladies and gentlemen, unless the Holy
Spirit pierces our conscience like that with the word of God, our hearts would become so
hard that we would have no conscience left. And everybody would do what was right in their
own eyes. But there is something absolutely liberating, wonderful and sweet about the
conviction of the Holy Ghost. Repentance is painful, but there is an exquisite pleasure
to that pain when one realizes that that repentance is born of the saving action of God the Holy
Spirit. God does not convict people of sin in order
to destroy them. God convicts people of sin in order to heal them. In order to restore
them. In order to bring them to himself. And this is what happens to David. When David
listens to the parable first he responds in anger to this mythical person that Nathan
had just spoken of. And when Nathan reveals that he was talking about David and he hears
the judgment of God falling upon his head, David doesn’t stand there and say, “Wait,
wait, wait a minute, let me give you all my excuses for why I was engaged in this. I’m
not a crook, you know. I made some mistakes. Please don’t get carried away with the severity
of this crime.” That’s not what he did. Here’s what he says. David said to Nathan,
“I have sinned against the LORD.” I did it Nathan. You’re right Nathan. I am the
man. See, already, the fruit of repentance is being formed in the soul of David before
he ever picks up the pen to write Psalm 51. He is already responding as a godly man to
the confrontation of the prophet. “And Nathan said to David, the LORD also
has put away your sin and you shall not die.” David you know the penalty for this is death.
God has you on two counts of capital crime here: adultery, and proxy murder. And God
would be perfectly just to slay you at this moment. But God is not going to kill you.
He is going to temper his justice with mercy. But there will be consequences David. “Because
by this deed you have given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the
child who was born to you and this woman shall surely die. And Nathan departed to his house.”
And then we read how the Lord struck that baby and how David for a week in sackcloth
and ashes fasted and cried and begged that God would spare that baby, and then ‘til
finally he looks out and he sees his guards whispering among themselves and he knows that
the baby has died just as Nathan has said. And when he hears the word that the hammer
had fallen what does he do? He changes his clothes. He anoints his head with oil, and
he goes to church to worship God. That’s repentance. That’s the kind of man who wrote
Psalm 51.
