What a divine simplicity there is in the words of our text: 'David said
unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord.' That is all. In the
original, two words are enough to revolutionise the man's whole life,
and to alter all his relations to the divine justice and the divine
Friend. 'I have sinned against the Lord.' Not an easy thing to say; and
as the story shows us, a thing that David took a long time to mount up
to.
Remember the narrative. A year has passed since his transgression. What
sort of a year has it been? One of the Psalms tells us, 'When I kept
silence my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long; for day
and night Thy hand was heavy upon me; my moisture was turned into the
drought of summer.' There were long months of sullen silence, in which
a clear apprehension and a torturing experience of divine
disapprobation, like a serpent's fang, struck poison into his veins.
His very physical frame seems to have suffered. His heart was as dry as
the parched grass upon the steppes. That was what he got by his sin. A
moment of turbid animal delight, and long days of agony; dumb suffering
in which the sense of evil had not yet broken him down into a rain of
sweet tears, but lay, like a burning consciousness, within his heart.
And then came the prophet with his parable, so tender, so ingenious, so
powerful. And the quick flash of generous indignation, which showed how
noble the man was after all, with which he responded to the picture,
unknowing that it was a picture of his own dastardly conduct, led on to
the solemn words in which Nathan tore away the veil; and with a
threefold lever, if I may so say, overthrew the toppling structure of
his impenitence.
First of all, and most chiefly, he seeks to win him to repentance by a
picture of God's great love and goodness. 'I have done this and that
and the other thing for thee. What hast thou done for Me?' Ah, that is
the true beginning. You cannot frighten men into penitence, you may
frighten them into remorse; and the remorse may or may not lead on to
repentance. But bring to bear upon a man's heart the thought of the
infinite and perfect love of God, and that is the solvent of all his
obstinate impenitence, and melts him to cry, 'I have sinned.' And along
with that element there is the other, the plain striking away of all
disguises from the ugly fact of the sin. The prophet gives it its
hideous name, and that is one element in the process which leads to
true repentance. For so strange and subtle are the veils which we cast
over our own evils, that it comes sometimes to us with a shock and a
start when some word, that we know to connote wickedness of the deepest
dye, is applied to them. David had very likely so sophisticated his
conscience that, though he had been writhing under the sense that he
was a wrongdoer, it came to him with a kind of ugly surprise when the
naked words 'adultery' and 'murder' were pressed up against his
consciousness.
And the third element that brought him to his senses, and to his knees,
was the threatening of punishment, which is salutary when it follows
these other two, the revelation of a divine love and the unveiling of
the essential nature of my own act; but which without these is but 'the
hangman's whip' to which only inferior natures will respond. And these
three, the appeal to God's love, the revelation of his own sin, the
solemn warning of its consequences--these three brought to bear upon
David's heart, broke him down into a passion of penitence in which he
has only the two words to say, 'I have sinned against the Lord.' That
is all. That is enough.
And what is it? It is the recognition--which is essential to all real
penitence--that I have not merely broken some impersonal law, or done
something that hurts my fellows, but that I have broken the relations
which I ought to sustain to a living, loving Person, who is God. We
commit crimes against society, we commit faults against one another, we
commit sins against God, and the very notion of sin involves, as its
correlative, the thought of the divine Lawgiver.
So, dear brethren, penitence goes deeper than a recognition of demerit
and unworthiness. It is more than an acknowledgment of imperfection and
breach of morality. It is something different altogether from the
acknowledgment that I have committed a fault against my fellow. David
had done Bathsheba and Uriah, and in them his whole kingdom, foul
wrong, but, as he says in Psalm li., 'Against Thee, Thee _only,_ have I
_sinned._' His account with these is of a less grave character, but
'against Thee I sinned.'
And in like manner, this penitence contains in it the recognition of
transgression against a loving Friend and Father, which had been
brought home to his mind by all the words of the rebuking prophet, who
was a kind of incarnate conscience for him now. And it contains, still
further, confession to God against whom he had sinned. The first
impulse of a man when he dimly discerns how far he has departed from
God's law, is that which the old story represents was the first impulse
of the first sinners--to hide himself in the trees of the garden. The
second impulse is to go to Him against whom we have sinned, and who
only therefore can deal with the sin in the way of forgiveness, and to
pour it all out before Him. Once an Apostle, when he caught a partial
glimpse of his own demerit and transgression, said to the Master with a
natural impulse, 'Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!' But
Peter had a deeper sense of his own sin, and a happier knowledge of
what Christ could do for his sin, when his brother Apostle whispering
to him in the boat, 'It is the Lord,' the traitor Apostle cast himself
into the shallow water and floundered through it anyhow, to get as
close as he could to the Master's feet.
Do not go away from God because you feel that you have sinned against
Him. Where should you go but to your mother's bosom, and hide your face
there, if you have committed faults against her? Where should you go
but to God if against Him you have transgressed? Look, my brother, at
your own character and conduct; measure the deficiencies and
imperfections, the transgressions and faults; ay! perhaps with some of
you, the crimes against men and society and human laws; but see beneath
all these a deeper thought; and stifle not the words that would come to
your lips as a relief, like a surgeon's lancet struck into some foul
gathering, 'I have sinned against the Lord.'
II. And now, secondly, notice with me David's pardon consequent upon
his repentance.
Can there be anything more striking--I do not say dramatic, for the
circumstances are far too serious for terms of art--can there be
anything more in the nature of a gospel to us all than that brief
dialogue? David said unto Nathan, 'I have sinned against the Lord.' And
Nathan said unto David, 'The Lord also hath put away thy sin.'
Immediate forgiveness, that is the first lesson that I would press upon
you. Dear brethren, it is an experience which you may each repeat in
your own history at this moment. It needs but the confession in order
that the forgiveness should come. At this end of the telephone whisper
your confession, and before it has well passed your lips there comes
back the voice sweet as that of angels, 'The Lord hath forgiven thy
sin.' One word, one motion of a heart aware of, and hating, and
desiring to escape from, its evil, brings with a rush the whole fulness
of fatherly and forgiving love into any heart. And that one confession
may be the turning-point of a man's life, and may obliterate all the
sinful past, and may bring him into loving, reconciled, harmonious
relations with the Almighty Judge.
Learn, too, not only the immediacy of the answer and the simplicity of
the means, but learn how thorough and complete God's dealing with your
sin may be. The original language of my text might be rendered, 'The
Lord hath caused thy sin to pass away'; the thought being substantially
that of some impediment or veil between man and Him which, with a touch
of His hand, He dissolves as it were into vapour, and so leaves all the
sky clear for His warmth and sunshine to pour down upon the heart. We
do not need to enter upon theological language in talking about this
great gift of forgiveness. It means substantially that howsoever you
and I have piled up mountain upon mountain, Alp upon Alp, of our evils
and transgressions, all pass away and become non-existent. Another word
of the Old Testament expresses the same idea when it speaks about sin
being 'covered.' Another word expresses the same idea when it speaks
about God as 'casting' men's sins 'into the depths of the sea'--all
meaning this one thing, that they no longer stand as barriers between
the free flow of His love and our poor hearts. He takes away the sense
of guilt, touches the wounded conscience, and there is healing in His
hand. As, according to the old belief, the sovereign, by laying his
hand upon sufferers from 'the King's evil' healed them and cleansed
them, so the touch of His forgiving love takes away the sense of guilt
and heals the spirit. He removes all the impediments between His love
and us. His love can now come undisturbed. His deepest and solemnest
judgments do not need to come; and no more does there stand frowning
between us and Him the spectre of our past.
People tell us that forgiveness is impossible, 'that whatsoever a man
soweth, that must he also reap'; that law is law, and that the
consequences cannot be averted. That is all quite true if there is not
a God. It is not true if there is; and if there is no God, there is no
sin. So if there is a God, there is forgiveness.
Consequences, as I shall have to show you in a moment, may still
remain, but pardon may be ours all the same. When you forgive your
child, does it mean that you do not thrash it, or does it mean that you
take it to your heart? And when God pardons, does it mean that He
waives His laws, or does it mean that He lets us come into the whole
warmth and sunshine of His love? Will you go there?
Forgiveness was to Jews a thing difficult to apprehend. It was hard for
them to understand the harmony of it with the rigid retribution on
which their whole system of religion reposed. But you and I have come
further into the light than Nathan and David had. And I have to preach
a modification of the words of my text which is not a limitation of
them, but the unveiling of their basis and the surest confirmation of
them, when I say 'In Him'--Jesus Christ--'we have redemption through
His blood, even the forgiveness of sins.'
The New Testament teaches us that the Cross of Christ threw its power
back upon former transgressions as well as forward upon future ones;
and that in Him past ages, though they knew Him not, received
remission. Christ is the Medium of the divine forgiveness; Christ's
Cross is the ground of the divine pardon; Christ's sacrifice is the
guarantee for us that the sin which He has borne He has borne away. 'By
His stripes we are healed.' 'Wherefore, men and brethren, be it known
unto you, that through this Man is preached unto _us_ the forgiveness
of _our_ sins.'
III. Third and lastly, look at the punishment which follows--shall I
say _notwithstanding_ or _because of_?--the penitence and the pardon.
In David's life there came the immediate retribution in kind, which was
signalised as such by the divine message--the death of the child 'who
was conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity.' But beyond that, look at
David's life after his great fall. There was no more brightness in it.
His own sin and example of lust loosed the bonds of morality in his
household, and his son followed his example and improved upon it. And
from that came Absalom's murder of his brother, and from that Absalom's
exile, and from that Absalom's rebellion, and from that Absalom's
death, which nearly killed his poor old father. And for all the rest of
his days his home was troubled, and his last years ended with the
turmoil of a disputed succession before his eyes were closed, all
traceable to this one foul crime.
Joab was the torment of David's later days, and Joab's power over him
depended upon his having been the instrument of Uriah's murder; and so
the master of the king, whose bidding he had done. Ahithophel was the
brain of Absalom's conspiracy. His defection struck a sharp arrow into
David's heart--'mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted.' He
evidently hated the king with fierce hatred. He was Bathsheba's
grandfather; and we are not going wrong, I think, in tracing his
passionate hatred, and the peculiar form of insult which he counselled
Absalom to adopt, to the sense of foul wrong which had been done to his
house by David's crime.
And so all through his days this poor old king had to do what you and I
have to do--to bear the temporal results of sin. 'Be not deceived, God
is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.'
So 'of our pleasant vices the gods make whips to scourge us.' And it is
in mercy that we have to drink as we have brewed, that we have to lie
upon the beds that we have made; that in regard to outward
consequences, and in regard to our own hearts and inward history, we
are the architects of our own fortunes, and cannot escape the penalties
of our sins and of our faults. Better to have it so than be cursed with
impunity!
Some of you young men are sowing diseases in your bones that will
either make you invalids or will kill you before your time. All of us
are bearing about with us, in some measure and sense, the issues, which
are the punishments, of our evil. Let us thank Him and take up the
praise of the old psalm, 'Thou wast a God that forgivest them, though
Thou tookest vengeance of their inventions.' There is either merciful
chastisement here, that we may be parted from our sins, or there is
judgment hereafter.
O my brother! let me beseech you, do not commit the suicide of
impenitence, but go to Christ, in whom all our sins are taken away, and
lay your hands on the head of that great Sacrifice, and 'the Lord shall
cause to pass the iniquity of your sin.'