Forgiveness

When the court puts a man into prison, it is providing the punishment that justice demands for his crimes. God also demands justice for crimes or sins. But God is able to give something that prisons can't offer: forgiveness for those sins.

In our study today, we're going to look at a man who was guilty of two of the worst sins that a person can commit–adultery and murder. We're also going to see how God dramatically changed his life by forgiving him of these sins.

This is Michael Mazzalongo inviting you to stay with us for today's edition of Bible Talk as we study the poignant story of David and Bathsheba.

A Lesson About Real Power

All right, welcome to our class today. Glad that you're here. We have a good lesson for you today. We're going to talk about power.

When we talk about power, we usually think political power, or financial power, or military power. That's how we think when we talk about power. But today I don't want to talk to you about those things. I want to talk to you about spiritual power–and more especially about the power of forgiveness.

How forgiveness has the power to change your life.

And in order to illustrate that idea, I want to tell you the story of David and Bathsheba.

Background: David After Goliath

Let me give you a little background about David. You remember who David was? He was the fellow with the one stone who killed the giant. Remember him?

Usually we tell that story and we kind of forget about David. He was a hero, and we leave him kind of on top of the mountain there as a hero of the people. But David had a life after Goliath.

He married the king's daughter, for example, and he became a kind of guerrilla fighter for many, many years, protecting small villages against marauding bands of other tribes. Eventually he himself became the king of Israel–and a very great king too. He built the palace. He fought in many wars. He continued to be a very great hero. I would say he was the real superstar in Israel.

But David did some pretty terrible things too. He didn't do just good things. He was an ordinary person who did great things. And he didn't just do great good things–he did great bad things as well.

So I want to tell you that story now: David and his terrible sins, and how the power of God's forgiveness changed his life.

David's Sin – II Samuel 11

Then it happened in the spring, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel, and they destroyed the sons of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But David stayed at Jerusalem.

- II Samuel 11:1

So the army goes off, and David stays home in Jerusalem.

²Now when evening came David arose from his bed and walked around on the roof of the king’s house, and from the roof he saw a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful in appearance. ³So David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” ⁴David sent messengers and took her, and when she came to him, he lay with her; and when she had purified herself from her uncleanness, she returned to her house. ⁵The woman conceived; and she sent and told David, and said, “I am pregnant.”

- II Samuel 11:2-5

So David gets into trouble real quickly, doesn't he? He stays home, he's taking a walk along the palace roof. It's a hot night. He can't sleep. He looks out–idle hands, the devil's workshop, that old saying. He sees a beautiful young woman taking her bath, and he desires her.

Now, he should have stopped right there and said, "Well, hey, this is trouble. I need to kind of get away. I need to go back to sleep here." Because don't forget, David was a married person. He had married the king's daughter, and he was still married to her.

But he didn't do that. He sent one of his servants to find out who she was. The servant says to him, "Oh, we know who she is. She is the wife of Uriah." And we'll find out that Uriah was one of his most loyal soldiers. So what does David do? He sends for her. He brings her into the palace.

The Bible doesn't give us all the little details of the situation, but could you imagine this young woman, very impressionable, coming into the palace of the king–the great hero of the people, the great David? She was impressed.

The Bible tells us that he seduced her. They slept together. And then a little later on she writes him a note saying, "Dear David, I'm pregnant." We're talking bad news here.

In those days, you couldn't just say, "Well, I'll divorce my wife, I'll marry you–no problem." The worst thing that happens nowadays with a public figure is a scandal in the newspaper. People read about it and go, "Oh, isn't that terrible?" and they go on with their life. But in those days, if someone committed adultery, the penalty was death by stoning. They took the man, the woman, and they stoned them to death. So David was in a lot of trouble.

David's Cover-Up Plan

⁶Then David sent to Joab, saying, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” So Joab sent Uriah to David. ⁷When Uriah came to him, David asked concerning the welfare of Joab and the people and the state of the war. ⁸Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house, and wash your feet.” And Uriah went out of the king’s house, and a present from the king was sent out after him. ⁹But Uriah slept at the door of the king’s house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house.

- II Samuel 11:6-9

So Uriah messes up his plans. David sends for Uriah, the woman's husband, and pretends he's interested in the war: "How's the war going?" Uriah tells him. Then David says, "Why don't you go home and relax? Take it easy. You've earned a holiday."

What's in David's mind? This guy's been away from his beautiful young wife for months–he'll go home, eat, bathe, sleep with his wife, and then the next day he goes back to the front and she says, "I'm pregnant," and it becomes just David and Bathsheba's little secret. But Uriah doesn't go home.

When David heard what Uriah had done, he summoned him and asked him: "What's the matter with you? Why didn't you go home to your wife last night after being away for so long?"

And Uriah replied:

Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in temporary shelters, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field. Shall I then go to my house to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife? By your life and the life of your soul, I will not do this thing.”

- II Samuel 11:11

What a wonderful guy this Uriah is. He's loyal. He denies himself. So Uriah stayed around the palace, and David invited him to dinner and got him drunk. But even so, he didn't go home that night. Again, he slept at the entry to the palace.

Now David tries to get him drunk. He figures if the guy's drunk, he'll feel aroused and want to go home. Still, he stays in the palace.

David's Third Plan: Murder

¹⁴Now in the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. ¹⁵He had written in the letter, saying, “Place Uriah in the front line of the fiercest battle and withdraw from him, so that he may be struck down and die.”

- II Samuel 11:14-15

So Joab assigned Uriah to a spot close to the besieged city where he knew that the enemy's best men were fighting, and Uriah was killed along with several other Israelite soldiers.

- II Samuel 11:26-27

David's Sins Listed

What did David do? Let's list his sins:

1. Premeditated adultery.
2. Premeditated betrayal.
3. Premeditated murder of an innocent man.
4. He lied afterward to cover it up before the people and before God.

Pretty bad sins, right?

God Confronts David – II Samuel 12:1-9

Let's take a look at how God dealt with him. 2 Samuel 12:1–9.

Then the Lord sent Nathan to David. And he came to him and said,

“There were two men in one city, the one rich and the other poor.

- II Samuel 12:1

Nathan tells the story of a rich man with many flocks who takes a poor man's only lamb to feed a guest. David becomes furious and declares the man should be punished.

⁷Nathan then said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the Lord God of Israel, ‘It is I who anointed you king over Israel and it is I who delivered you from the hand of Saul. ⁸I also gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your care, and I gave you the house of Israel and Judah; and if that had been too little, I would have added to you many more things like these! ⁹Why have you despised the word of the Lord by doing evil in His sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the sons of Ammon.

- II Samuel 12:7-9

God, through the prophet, says to David: you are a liar, you are an adulterer, and you are a murderer. A little later on, David finally acknowledges it. He says: yes, that's true. I am guilty. I'm sorry. And God says to him through the prophet:

"I forgive you. You shall not die."

Now, when we come back, we're going to take a look at the second part of David's life, and we're going to see how the forgiveness of God had the power to change him from a liar and a cheater and a murderer into something completely new.

So stay with us and we'll be right back after this.

David's "Before and After" – Psalm 32

All right, we're back in our class. We're talking about the power of forgiveness. David wrote about his experience with Bathsheba. He wrote poetry. He wrote psalms. Psalm 32 is like a before-and-after testimonial: what he was like before, and what he was like after forgiveness.

We're going to do this psalm backwards a little bit. Usually you start at verse 1. This time I want to start at verse 3.

Before: Hiding Sin

³When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away
Through my groaning all day long.
⁴For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me;
My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. Selah.

- Psalms 32:3-4

What's David saying? He's saying, "I was a sinner, but I was trying to hide my sins." He snuck around and tried to cover what he had done. The more he tried to cover it over, the worse it got.

Between the time he committed these things and the time the prophet confronted him, almost a year went by. During that year David says his conscience was driving him crazy. Some things don't change. You do something wrong, you feel bad. You feel guilty. Sin makes you feel guilty. No matter what you do to cover it up, down deep inside it's like an ulcer on your soul.

David says God's hand was heavy on him. It's figurative–the idea is like God was pressing on him, squeezing him. Eventually the guilt worked through his spiritual life into his physical life. He felt so bad spiritually that physically he began to be ill.

"My strength evaporated like water on a sunny day."

His conscience was making him physically ill.

The Turning Point: Confession

Then he says:

I acknowledged my sin to You,
And my iniquity I did not hide;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord”;
And You forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah.

- Psalms 32:5

That's the turning point in David's life. He finally said, "God, I can't take this anymore. I'm going to admit my fault. I'm wrong."

And the beauty about David is that he admits he's wrong. He doesn't say, "I'm wrong, kind of." He recognizes he was totally wrong and totally responsible, and he needs God to forgive him.

Justice, Consequences, and Forgiveness

Now the question is: why could God forgive him for lies and murder and adultery?

We have to realize two things. There are two consequences for sin:

1. One consequence is here on earth.
2. Another consequence is after we die.

When God forgives sins, he forgives the eternal consequences, not the earthly consequences.

Example: a man drinks for 20 years and destroys his liver. He repents and God forgives him–saving him from the eternal consequences–but he still has cirrhosis of the liver. He must bear the earthly consequences. God is love, but God is justice too.

When God forgives you, he saves you from the eternal consequences of your sin, but you may still bear the consequences of what you did on earth. God allows earthly consequences to encourage us not to do it again.

What God Was Doing When He Forgave David

What is God doing when he forgives? When God said to David, "I forgive you," God was removing the blame for David's sins from David's shoulders.

Why could God do that?

Because God knew that one day he was going to put the blame for David's sin on Jesus Christ and let him suffer for what David did.

The good news is that the blame you deserve for everything you ever did, God removes from your shoulders and puts it on Jesus Christ.

and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.

- I Peter 2:24

That's what happened to David. God took away the burden of sin from his shoulders because he knew one day, 500 years later, he would put it on Jesus Christ and let him take the shot for what David did.

After: Happiness, Joy, Relief

Back in Psalm 32, we see David's reaction to God's goodness.

¹How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven,
Whose sin is covered!
²How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity,
And in whose spirit there is no deceit!

- Psalms 32:1-2

He's happy. His sin is no longer before God. When God takes away the blame, it's gone. Relief. Joy. Happiness.

Encouraging Others

Then very quickly in verse 6 and 7, David says:

⁶Therefore, let everyone who is godly pray to You in a time when You may be found;
Surely in a flood of great waters they will not reach him.
⁷You are my hiding place; You preserve me from trouble;
You surround me with songs of deliverance. Selah.

- Psalms 32:6-7

You see the difference? At one time he was dying with guilt. Then God forgave him. In his new life, he was relieved. He was happy. He was joyful. He was confident to face God in judgment. We can all experience that forgiveness–the power of forgiveness in our lives.

My prayer for you, and my prayer for our friends at home, is that you also will know the power of God's forgiveness in your life. Stay with us. We'll be right back to summarize in a moment.

Program Summary

We've learned some very key ideas today about forgiveness.

• Forgiveness has the power to change a person's life in ways that nothing else really can.
• Forgiveness for sins is only possible because Jesus Christ took on himself the blame and the punishment for the sins of all men.
• In order to receive forgiveness, David had to acknowledge his sins before God and ask him for forgiveness.

Now, if someone were to ask me, "How can I today receive forgiveness for my sins and know the joy that David experienced?" I would give him the same answer that Peter the apostle gave the crowd that he was preaching to on Pentecost Sunday when he said:

Peter said to them, “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

- Acts 2:38

So in the modern era, if someone wishes to be forgiven, they need to first of all believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, make a sincere decision to repent, and be baptized.

Well, that's all for this week. We hope you'll be with us next week for another edition of Bible Talk.