”Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the Lord God of Israel: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your keeping, and gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if that had been too little, I also would have given you much more! Why have you despised the commandment of the Lord, to do evil in His sight? You have killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword; you have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the people of Ammon.“ II Samuel 12:7-9 NKJV
a. You are the man: With this, Nathan applied the parable with alarming simplicity. Nathan had to shock David into seeing his sin for what it was. “This was downright plain dealing indeed.” (Trapp)
i. Shocked, but not frightened: “You cannot frighten men into repentance, you may frighten them into remorse; and the remorse may or may not lead on to repentance.” (Maclaren)
ii. “God accuses us and condemns us one by one that He may save us one by one.” (Maclaren) A personal salvation requires a personal conviction of sin. It wasn’t enough for David to confess that he was a sinner in a general sense; he had to confess his sin at this very point.
iii. In this sense, the confession of our sin needs to be specific. J. Edwin Orr tells of a time of revival in Brazil when a lady stood in a crowded church and said, “Please pray for me. I need to love people more.” The leader gently told her, “That is not confession, sister. Anyone could have said it.” Later in the service the woman stood again and said, “Please pray for me. What I should have said is that my tongue has caused a lot of trouble in this church.” Her pastor whispered to the leader, “Now she’s talking.”
iv. It costs nothing to say, “I’m not everything I should be” or “I ought to be a better Christian.” It does cost something to say, “I have been a trouble-maker in this church” or “I have had bitterness towards certain leaders, to whom I apologize right now.”
b. I anointed you…I delivered you…. I gave you…and gave you the house of Israel and Judah…. I also would have given you much more: Through Nathan, God explained to David that his sin was really a base expression of ingratitude. When God gave all this to David and had so much more to give him, David sought out sin instead.
c. Why have you despised the commandment of the LORD, to do evil in His sight? In Psalm 19:8, David said: The commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes. Yet by his sin, he despised the commandment of the LORD. David acted as if God’s command was wrong and to be despised when he did evil in His sight.
d. You have killed Uriah…you have taken his wife: This is another way of saying, “You are the man!” God won’t allow David to blame anyone or anything else. (Guzik)
You Are That Man!
When we are convicted of sin it’s the Lord telling us, you are that man or woman!
God gives us a conscience and if we continue to sin He can sear it just as He did with the Pharaoh! In other words He turns us over to our sin and lets it rule over our lives.
“The New Testament concept of conscience is more individual in nature and involves three major truths.”
“First, conscience is a God-given capacity for human beings to exercise self-evaluation.”
“Second, the New Testament portrays the conscience as a witness to something.”
“Third, the conscience is a servant of the individual’s value system. An immature or weak value system produces a weak conscience, while a fully informed value system produces a strong sense of right and wrong.”
https://www.gotquestions.org/conscience.html
Do you have a strong sense of right and wrong?
Blessings
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