WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH NATHAN?

Dr. Richard J. Henderson August 2, 2009

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II Samuel 11:26-12:13a
Psalm 51

Introduction

Both scriptures today relate to a horrible experience in the life of King David. It is one of the most intriguing, awful, offensive, and hopeful stories in the Bible. This story has all of the drama, plotting, and conniving of a day time soap opera. It has all the betrayal and bloodshed of an action-adventure movie. It has all the sex and scandal of a documentary about politicians in Washington.

But underneath it all is the hope, healing, forgiveness and renewal of Jesus' good news.

I

The story begins when King David is walking on the roof of his house in Jerusalem. It is springtime, late in the afternoon, and David is enjoying some fresh air while his soldiers are out ravaging the Ammonites. As he walks in the open air he notices a woman taking a bath on the roof of a house nearby.

She is a beautiful woman. David is captivated. He sends for an aide to find out who this woman is. The report comes back: she is Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam and wife of Uriah, the Hittite.

Then David sends for her and when she arrives he "sleeps" with her. Then she goes back to her house. A few weeks later Bathsheba sends word to David that she is pregnant.

So what do you do now, if you're King David?

David calls in Uriah, Bathsheba's husband, who is out fighting on the battlefield. "How is the war going? Tell me about it." They talk for a while. Then David sends Uriah home. He wants him to sleep with his wife so he'll think the child is his when it arrives. But Uriah doesn't go home; he sleeps outside David's front door.

The next day David shouts, "Why didn't you go home last night?" Uriah says, "The Ark of the Covenant is still in a tent, and my fellow soldiers are out fighting in the battlefield. How could I go home and enjoy a good meal and wine, and lay with my wife?" A noble response.

Then David invites Uriah over again and this time gets him drunk. He sends him home again. But, even drunk, Uriah refuses to go.

David calls in the commander of his troops and gives him these orders: send Uriah into the front lines and then, in the midst of the hardest fighting, tell everybody but Uriah to retreat. The commander does this and Uriah is killed in the battle.

When the commander sends a message to David that Uriah has been killed, David sends word back to him, "Don't let his matter trouble you; the sword kills now one and now another."

II

This is where our reading today picked up. When Bathsheba finds out that her husband has been killed in battle, she grieves during the set mourning time. When that time is over, David sends for her; she becomes one of his wives and bears him a son.

Many commentators and filmmakers have tried to shift much of the blame to Bathsheba, as if she were enticing David and in on his plot. This is coming to the Bible with a biased viewpoint about her, and perhaps about women. There is nothing in this story that indicates that Bathsheba encouraged David's actions. He ordered her to his house. After the time of mourning for her husband he tells her that she will become his wife. He was the king, after all, so she had a limited number of options.

III

Now God, who has given a great deal to David and done a lot for him, knows what David has done. In a great understatement the Bible says God is "displeased."

God's prophet in the time of David was a man named Nathan. He's in the most precarious position. His job is to "speak the truth in love." He has to tell King David what God likes and dislikes about what is going on. He often has to bring bad news to the king.

Now people with a lot of power don't like to hear bad news. They especially don't like being told that what they're doing is wrong.

We've seen this with presidents who surround themselves with aides who will only tell them what they want to hear. This almost always ends badly.

But Nathan is acutely aware that telling the king to his face that's he's a royal sinner is not likely to end well for him! He could confront David with the truth and David's reaction might be to have his head loped off. If he killed Uriah, what would keep him from killing Nathan too?

But Nathan is a wise man. So instead of confronting David directly, he tells a story. He lays out the story so that it can be heard as a real event that could have happened.

Two men lived in the same city; one was wealthy, the other poor. The rich man had farm animals everywhere, but the poor man only had one little ewe lamb. He treated that lamb like a member of the family. It had grown up with his children, he fed if from the little food he had, and even kept it in his house. The little lamb was like a daughter to him.

Now a traveler stopped at the rich man's house, and in order to offer hospitality the rich man needed to serve him a meal. But as he looked out over his fields of sheep, he didn't really want to give up one of them, so he went and took the lamb from the poor man, killed it, roasted it, and served it to his guest.

When David hears the story he is outraged. "The man deserves to die!"

There is a long pause.

Then without raising his voice Nathan says, "You are the man."

David is drawn in by the story and can't help but condemn the rich man. What David isn't able to see in himself, he could see in the injustice of someone else. Nathan connects the dots between David's life and this story with those four words. "You are the man."

Imagine if our presidents had a Nathan to guide them, or if they listened to the Nathans that were there. What if someone had created a parable that related to slavery, or to taking land from native people and putting them on reservations. Maybe a Nathan could have spared us the "Trail of Tears" across our country.

What Nathan was able to do was put David in the shoes of that poor man, the one whose only lamb was taken and killed. Nathan made David feel the pain of having the rich and powerful take what they want, even though it's not theirs.

Maybe you and I can hear the voice of a Nathan in our own lives. Could we ask ourselves how we would feel if we were on the receiving end of what we ask other people to do? "How would I feel if I were being treated this way?"

IV

This leads us to David's response. He might have chopped off Nathan's head. He might have lashed out at him with a defense of what he had done. He might have stonewalled it all, saying something like, "I did not have sex with that woman."

But he didn't. He said, "I have sinned against the Lord." When he was helped not only to see but feel his sin, David confessed to God. David didn't pull away from God; he pleaded for God's forgiveness, as our Psalm this morning shows.

Of course there was a price to pay for what he had done - there almost always is - because of the evil of it all. Our actions have consequences because this is a moral world. I mean, David knocked down three of the Ten Commandments in a matter of days - coveting, adultery, and murder. He bore the scars of his actions for the rest of his life.

V

Sometimes in an Bible study classes someone will say, "David did those horrible things and he is still considered the greatest king of Israel?"

Yes. David was a hero from a very early age. Remember how he took down Goliath with nothing but a sling and a good sized stone? That was when he was a young boy. He went on to become a conquering military hero. He was also an artist and a poet. It probably didn't hurt that he was very handsome.

But of all the accomplishments of his life the greatest thing he did was to respond to Nathan's words with, "I have sinned against the Lord."

He realized the horror of what he had done and he repented, which literally means turned around. He cried out for God's forgiveness, and God forgave him.

Conclusion

As I hope you can see there are dozens of things we can learn from David's experience. One of them, at least, is that if God can forgive David what he did, God can forgive anything you've done. When we turn to God, it is impossible to step outside the bounds of God's love.

Amen

© Richard J. Henderson 2009