What David Received

Editor's Note: Part one can be found here.

David was drunk with power. He “sent” to inquire of Bathsheba and then “sent” for her. He “sent” word to Joab with a directive to “send” him Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband. Then, after Uriah was dead, David “sent” for Bathsheba and married her. The repeated word provides a lexical context for understanding what was happening in David’s head. He was filled with a sense of his own power and importance. A person’s fate dangled like a cheap ornament on the tip of his finger. He could, at will, dispose of it in whatever way he wished.  

And then chapter twelve emerges like a train from a darkened tunnel. Verse one says, “And the LORD sent Nathan to David.” The effect is theatrical. I imagine an older brother bullying his younger siblings only to hear the voice of his father summoning him to account! David was being summoned to account. And reckoning came through a simple story.

There was a rich man and there was a poor man. The rich man had many sheep, but the poor man had one. Yet, the poor man loved the one sheep so much that it was “like a daughter to him.” What we don’t see in the English is clear in the Hebrew. Bathsheba means something like “daughter of the oath.” So, when Nathan the prophet was telling the story he came close to saying the name of Bathsheba! I wonder what was going on inside of David. When he heard the beginning of Bathsheba’s name did his stomach tighten?  Did he immediately say to himself, “He knows!” Perhaps the one thing we do know is what the king said of himself after it was all over, “For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away…” (Psalm 32:3). He was a mess on the inside no matter how calm his outward demeanor.

 But the real punchline comes at the end of the story when David says, “[the] man who has done this deserves to die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold…” I wonder in what tone or with what inflection Nathan said, “You are the man.” I wonder if it came with the force of emotion complete with a pointed finger or an exasperated sigh. Nevertheless, it came. David was the man, the rich man of the story. He had taken the “bat” of the poor man, and he would repay the “bat” fourfold with his sons.  The baby would die, Amnon would die, Absalom would die, and Adonijah would die. David had named his own punishment.

Have you ever thought about David’s situation and wondered what among his sins was the worst? Was it adultery, murder, the lying to cover it all up?  According to Nathan, the worst sin was that David had utterly despised the Lord. And David knew it. In Psalm fifty-one, David wrote a Psalm of repentance and in that Psalm, he wrote, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.” Brothers and sisters, David is not saying that his other sins were not sins, but he is recognizing the sin that enabled all the others. When you despise the Lord, anything is possible.

But thank the Lord, with repentance comes forgiveness. Notice the simplicity of the transaction, “David said to Nathan, ‘I have sinned against the Lord.’” And then Nathan simply said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin.” That is what full and free pardon means. But that pardon doesn’t come in a vacuum.  The sacrificial system must have taken on new meaning in David’s eyes at the moment when Nathan reported that David would not die, but his son would. Here is another allusion to substitution. David’s son’s seemingly innocent life for his own guilty life. I wonder if David caught a glimpse of the work of his greater Son, the Lord Jesus, at that moment. The One who would be truly innocent and without blame willingly exchanging His life for that of guilty sinners like David and like you and me.

Jeffrey A Stivason (Ph.D. Westminster Theological Seminary) is pastor of Grace Reformed Presbyterian Church in Gibsonia, PA.  He is also Professor of New Testament Studies at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, PA. Jeff is the Editorial Director of Ref21 and Place for Truth both online magazines of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.