Click this link to hear an audio version of the below text narrated by SOTH member Jerry Rhinehart:
2 Samuel 12:7-9 (NIV)
7 Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. 8 I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you all Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. 9 Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.
God chose David to be king of Israel. God gave him everything. How did David respond? He used his power and authority to take another man’s wife, get her pregnant and then commit murder to cover it up. Not what God had hoped for. Then God sent the prophet Nathan to confront David and expose his sin. But what God did next was shocking! He tells David that the consequence of his actions will fall on the newborn child! That message runs to the heart of the Gospel. This story shows how deep our sin really is and how radical God’s rescue plan had to be. There were real, serious consequences for David and also for us. David’s story is meant to shock us and wake us up to this reality. You and I and the rest of humanity are not good. We use and abuse others. We live in a world where children are bought and sold for sex, where there is an abundance of food, but children are dying of hunger. We make choices everyday to cover up sin and look the other way. The salvation we have is radical and shocking and it should rock us to the core. Ask Jesus to show you how great his salvation really is and to better understand how much it cost. May the shocking reality of our sin and its consequences open our eyes and help us to cling more closely to Jesus.