'And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan
said unto David, The Lord also hath put away thy sin.'--2 SAMUEL xii.
13.
We ought to be very thankful that Scripture never conceals the faults
of its noblest men. High among the highest of them stands the
poet-king. Whoever, for nearly three thousand years, has wished to
express the emotions of trust in God, longing after purity, aspiration,
and rapture of devotion, has found that his words have been before him.
And this man sins; black, inexcusable, aggravated transgression. You
know the shameful story; I need not tell it over again. The Bible gives
it us in all its naked ugliness, and there are precious lessons to be
got out of it; such, for instance, as that it is not innocence that
makes men good. '_This_ is the man after God's own heart!' people
sneer. Yes! Not because saints have a peculiar morality, and atone for
adultery and murder by making or singing psalms, but because, having
fallen into foul sin, he learned to abhor it, and with many tears, with
unconquerable resolution, with deepened trust in God, set his face once
more to press toward the mark. That is a lesson worth learning.
And, again, David was not a hypocrite because he thus fell. All sin is
inconsistent with devotion; but, thank God, we cannot say how much or
how dark the sin must be which is incompatible with devotion, nor how
much evil there may still lurk and linger in a heart of which the main
set and aspiration are towards purity and God.
And, again, the worst transgressions are not the passionate outbursts
contradictory of the main direction of a life which sometimes come; but
the habitual, though they be far smaller, evils which are honey-combing
the moral nature. White ants will pick a carcase clean sooner than a
lion. And many a man who calls himself a Christian, and thinks himself
one, is in far more danger, from little pieces of chronic meanness in
his daily life, or sharp practice in his business, than ever David was
in his blackest evil.
But the main lesson of all is that great and blessed one of the
possibility of any evil and sin like this black one, being annihilated
and caused to pass away through repentance and confession. It is to
that aspect of our text that I turn, and ask you to look with me at the
three things that come out of it: David's penitence; David's pardon
consequent upon his penitence; and David's punishment, notwithstanding
his penitence and pardon.