2 Samuel 12 is all about Nathan and David. After the made-for-TV miniseries that is 2 Samuel 11, chapter 12 is a welcome call to reality. It’s terrible to watch an Old Testament Christian fall from grace. It is difficult to watch a prophet of God call him on the carpet. It is awesome to watch God’s grace in action. While the contents of chapter 11 might be found on the contents of any streaming service, the contents of 12 will never be found outside the pages of Scripture or the umbrella of God’s church.
If I told you, you need to call someone to repentance, does that make you excited? The pastor who trained me talked about discipline calls as something that he wanted to wait to do until he was in a great mood. This was because they didn’t always go the way he had hoped. As it turns out God’s people (not the general population) don’t always like to hear what God says about their sinful lives. That doesn’t give pastors or any Christian the excuse to not confront sin, first in our own lives, and then in the life of a brother or sister in Christ who might be caught up in a sin.
David’s response is Spirit wrought. It is our God who works not only saving faith through the Gospel of Jesus, but repentance when he confronts sin with the hammer of his law. One of the best ways to do that is to present Scripture, or the message of Scripture, as the prophet Nathan does with David. Nathan isn’t accusing anyone of anything – not right away. All he does is tell a story. Stories aren’t dangerous. They are neutral. In 2 Samuel 12 David was so blind to his sin that in his hypocrisy he was instantly able to condemn the rich man. When Nathan, with just a few words, turned God law on David, he was crushed.
What could David’s reaction have been? Anger, maybe? King have been known to lop off heads when they don’t like what they hear. It could’ve been denial. That’s what David had been doing for many months by the time Nathan walked into his throne room. When those reactions come to you now, that doesn’t mean that you have done anything wrong. It won’t be fun, but you are doing the Lord’s work. And… by the grace of God you might just be saving a soul from hell. The importance of this topic comes from the reality that if a soul dies in unrepentance, in unbelief, that soul is lost forever.
Want to hear more? Watch this week’s Bible study, the second in a two week series from 2 Samuel.
Please click HERE for the Bible class slides.
Please click HERE for the other lessons from our series VIC – Very Important Chapters of the Bible.