DAVID: A SINNER WITH A PROMISE transcript of a sermon by Rev. Harry Van Dyken probably preached c. 1980 in Ontario, Canada (line 1 of typewritten label says "Psalm 51") (line 2 of label says "David, A Sinner with A Promise") (I pencilled in a star on the corner of the label) (line 1 of label on other side says "Psalm 128") (line 2 of label on other side says "Jehovah's Glorious Blessing") recorded on one side (45 min.) of an audiocassette that was made in U.S.A. edited by J.S. Van Dyken to remove some coughing and noise transcript broken into paragraphs and sections (four headings inserted) I turn with you to the Word of God as you'll find it in Second Samuel, the eleventh chapter. We read the eleventh chapter and on through the fifteenth verse--the fourteenth verse of chapter 12--the fifteenth--and the verses twenty-four and twenty-five of chapter 12. [Read K.J.V. 2 Samuel 11:1-27; 12:1-15,24-25 until 8:30. Sing Psalter Hymnal song 55:1-3,5 until 12:37.] Congregation beloved of the Lord Jesus Christ, subsequent to the history that we read, David, a man after God's own heart--subsequent to the history that we read concerning him, David penned Psalm 51. I want to read that psalm. [Read K.J.V. Psalm 51 until 15:51.] The public confession of a man of God, but more than that, the public testimony of amazing grace, the public testimony of a grace that's greater than all our sin, the public testimony of a man who could conclude his psalm by saying, "LORD, restore now what I broke--build it up again. Restore the walls of Zion. Do good in Thy good pleasure unto Jerusalem." For our sin, as David's sin, breaks, tears, destroys. [16:41] Sin is always that way, without any exception, and the Lord Jesus Christ, when He was on earth, said, "I came not to bring the righteous but sinners to repentance." Christ, in saying this, said there was no room for righteous people in the Church of Jesus Christ. That is, no room for righteous people who are righteous in themselves, who have not sinned. Because, they are then SELF-righteous, with a righteousness which may look pretty good to men but with God is TOTALLY unacceptable. He just will not receive it. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God; there is none that doeth good, no, not so much as one. They have ALL turned aside; they have ALL together become filthy. There is none that seeketh after God, no, not so much as one (Romans 3). [18:09] David was a king of Israel. And David thought--just as many people think, and as we all think at times--that--David thought that he occupied a special place, and so he could sin with impunity. He could sin without paying the consequences. He could sin without it really being sin 'cause he was a king. Because he was a king, he could reach out to those who were under him and do as he pleased. [18:46] David's no stranger in that respect; that's always the way sin works; that's always the way the devil tempts. "It's not really bad for you; it's not really sin for you. In your situation, in your circumstance, in where you are and what you're doing"--in other words, David--mankind today--rather than to face sin for what it really is, and to face the wonderful and amazing grace of God, would rather redefine sin; so it becomes a lot easier--it becomes a lot easier to live, they think--it becomes a lot easier to exist in the midst of a society and of a culture that is rotten. It becomes a lot easier to adjust and to move. Situational ethics is a lot easier--ethic--you can weave your way through a lie. And David thought that. [19:52] Situation ethics is not new. Situation ethics goes all the way back to Paradise when Satan came and said, "God doesn't understand the situation; but, Eve, you understand it. Because God doesn't understand the situation, He said, 'You'll die,' didn't He. No! In this situation, Eve, if you go ahead and eat of the fruit of the tree, you'll REALLY live, you'll know what life is." How many times has Satan said that? That's what he's said to you over and over and over again. "You'll REALLY know what life is if you just sin." These people who haven't dipped in--as the Lord Himself wrote in the letters to the seven churches in Asia Minor--"if you just dipped into the deep things of Satan, then you'd know what this is all about." "And," said Jezebel, the Jezebel of the New Testament, the Jezebel in Revelation--"And," said Jezebel, "then you can really be a Christian." God said, said to the church, "If you don't throw her out, I will; and all those who follow her with her will I throw into a bed of sickness. And I'll destroy her and her children with death." And, oh, Church of Christ, to redefine sin--David tried it. It was only tragedy. [21:38] I want you to notice, "David: a sinner with a promise." I want you to see David's sin; I want you to notice Nathan's message, the king's sentence, and God's disposition. [21:52] DAVID'S SIN David, a sinner with a promise. There is no question about his sin, is there? There really is no question, is there, that David was in such a special place that he could do those kind of things? There really is no question, is there, that we can redefine sin to fit the situation? that sin is different today than it was then, or different then that it is today? For sin is to transgress the law of a righteous and holy God. And that law of a righteous and holy God, as David found out, is not a willy-nilly, arbitrary something which God just decided, "Well, I'll think I'll make those ants down there that are crawling around there--I think I'll make them do this, and I think I'll make them do that, and I think that I will like that. I will like to see that: how they are not able to do that, and how they are not able to do--I think I'll like that." That is not the way it is. Jehovah God said, "I've made these in My image, Adam and Eve and ALL their children. And now for them really to show forth My image, I'll tell them because through sin they've lost that knowledge. And as I bring them back through the blood of My beloved Son, as I bring them back through that sacrifice which I will offer, I'll show them how to be as My image. I'll show them where joy is, where happiness is, where the wonder of life is, I'll show them again. That eating of the fruit of that tree is death-dealing. And that--stay away from it!" Seeing the fence that God built around it and saying, "No, there's death there," will bring joy and happiness. [23:50] And David said, "No, God, You don't understand. You don't understand. I NEED this. I'm a KING! It's all right for me." How often has that happened, Church of Christ, in your life? "It's all right for me: I'm somebody special. The situation demands it. It isn't bad after all." Redefining sin. David committed adultery. He committed adultery with the wife of a man who was fighting his battles, where he should have been. Then, because he defined sin the way he did, he had to get rid of that man because that man was in the way. That man wouldn't cooperate. So he had to get rid of that man. And he did. He had him murdered, along with others. To cover up the murder, others were murdered with him. In losses in a battle where the losses need not have been. Joab knew that: Joab said, "Tell David this." [25:17] David's sin was great. What shall we say, Church of Christ? "That's a greater sin than any of us have done." Then we've misunderstood. Then we've misunderstood. That's a danger in the Church of Jesus Christ. I know that we've often as a church shied away from talking publicly about public sins. God moved David to write a confession which we can read today. What do we say? What do we say when we read Psalm 51? "What a horrible, gruesome man that man David was!" No, we don't. We say, "What a wonder! What an amazing, amazing thing that David could tell us this about his life. He could put himself out and say, 'Look what GOD did! Look what GOD did! He took a sinner like me; He lets me write part of His Bible. He took a sinner like me. Later on He said about me, "Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the son of Abraham."' Later on there were blind people there on the way to Jericho who were crying out, 'Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on us!' because somehow there's power in that name." [26:41] David's sin was great. Sin today is great. Whether it's of a public nature, that we then must clear it away--for everyone. Or whether it's that which is between us and our God, or us and our family, or us and our neighbour. Sin is great. We can't define it away. So I don't really think that there's anyone here who wants to define David's sin away, the sin of adultery, the sin of murder. [27:27] NATHAN'S MESSAGE It was good, you see, when Nathan the prophet came to him, for God sent Nathan to him, and Nathan came with that message disguised. Nathan came to David, and he told him a story, a story in which David was the main actor but he didn't know it. So when Nathan had carefully told him all about what God had to say about this in disguise, and he looked at that whole enactment that Nathan held before him, and he didn't recognize the main actor--so when it was all finished, and David said as king, "That man shall surely die!"--that [sic] Nathan called to his attention, "Didn't you recognize yourself? You're that man!" [28:18] You ever had that happen? God works with His Spirit in His Word in such a way that it happens to you? That God says, "You're that man!" So easy to condemn others, isn't it? So easy to look at the sins of others and talk about how terrible they are. But when God made the scene of sin before us, and we look at it and say, "Isn't that terrible? Isn't it horrible?"--that, God says, "You're that man! Thou art the man!" In other words, that the message of God's Word concerning sin comes home, that there is none righteous, that this is a total involvement for all of us, that--yes--there are relationships that have to be straightened out. [29:21 plus 0.5 s] DAVID'S REPENTANCE David had to do that too, and God insisted that David do that. And David did it in a beautiful way! In fact, David looked back, and he said--he said--when he saw himself there finally in that enactment--when he saw himself--and he said, "You know, I was born in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. I'm no good! I'm no good! Their king, that was me! That was David! I'm no good! But I have a great God! I have a wonderful Jehovah! And I can pray." David threw himself on the ground. He prayed, he prayed: "Wash me with hyssop, and I shall be clean." Now the washing with hyssop was a very common thing in the Old Testament where God, when God instituted the covenant in Exodus--that God said that when the bird was killed and his blood was put in the bowl, that you dip with hyssop in that bowl, and you sprinkle the congregation, you sprinkle the altar, and that blood sanctifies. And in the Passover, when the blood of the lamb was put into the basin, and with hyssop they dipped into that blood and sprinkled it on the doorposts and on the lintel, and the angel of death didn't come in--"Oh," says David, "wash me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me with the blood of Christ, with the blood of the Lamb of God!" [31:06] That's what John the Baptist was talking about when Jesus came into the world, and he said, "Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world!" Please note that he didn't say, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who will help HIDE the sin of the world, who will help REDEFINE the sin of the world, who will help MAKE EXCUSES for the sin of the world, who will help it so that we don't have to take sin so seriously, who will help in that we can dress sin in other clothes and it won't look so bad." But the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world, knows what it is, recognizes it fully, and says, "I'll take it on My shoulders and carry it to the cross of Calvary where it will meet with the justice of God." "Wash me with hyssop, and I shall be clean." [31:59] And a very critical matter, Church of Christ, a critical matter which sin brings--"Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me." David was a king; in the Old Testament the Spirit was not poured out on all flesh. Not on all the church. SPECIALLY, to kings and priests and prophets. And David is a king, and he has a special call from God, and he says, "Don't--please don't take Thy Spirit away from me." What does that mean for today? It means, Church of Christ, that with the pouring out of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament on Pentecost, every child of God is a king, a prophet, and a priest. And every child of God, because of sin, endangers the abiding presence of the Spirit of God. So that cry must go up with David, "Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Cleanse me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Then sinners will learn of me, and transgressors will understand, and sinners will be converted unto Thee." [33:14] GOD'S DISPOSITION See what David's saying? When people look at THIS man David and see the amazing grace of God, they'll say, "There's a place for me." That's what God wants, Church of Christ. That's what He wants with the whole Church of Jesus Christ, that men can see it's a place of saved sinners. To understand what sin is, to understand the amazing--the deep--need of forgiveness. To understand, God provides. 'Cause you'll notice what the king said: the king passed sentence, "That man shall surely die. He shall restore fourfold." Now, you talk about a predicament when David--when Nathan--said, "You're the man!" Now tell me, how does a man restore somebody's life onefold, let alone fourfold? How did he--how could he give--how could he give--Uriah his life back? and his wife back? He tried with his monkey business to let him keep his life, but God said, "No." And Uriah said, "No." Oh, he didn't know it, but he still--in his--in his integrity he said, "No." But, how do you do it? How do you do it, People of God? How do we pay for sin? How do we restore, how do we make restitution? How do we get rid of results of sin? Yet that's the sentence: "He shall die, and he shall restore fourfold." That's the king's sentence, and it came from God: the sentence of death for sin, the sentence of restitution. How do you do that? How do you do it? How do you move from--how do you move from Second Samuel twelve verse fourteen and fifteen, "'Howbeit, by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die,' and Nathan departed unto his house, and the LORD struck the child that Uriah's wife bare unto David, and it was very sick"--how do you come from there to verse 24, "And David comforted Bathsheba his wife, and went in unto her, and lay with her, and she bare a son and called his name Solomon, and the LORD loved him. And he sent by the name [sic] of Nathan the prophet and called his name Jedidiah, because of the LORD." That name JEDIDIAH means simply, "Loved of Jehovah." How--how do we get from--from, "I was born in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me"? All of this flows--flows from a heart that--that's perverse, from a heart that--that--that--can't seek God. To the place where we can say, "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise." That we can say, "I've borne a son, and his name is Jedidiah, loved of Jehovah." [36:59] That transition, Church of Christ, is what God brought about, God's disposition. "David, you're not going to die." "Why not?" "Because you saw your sin, David. Because seeing your sin for what it really is, you humbled yourself before God, you confessed your sin. You said, 'God be merciful to me a sinner.' You're not going to die, David; you're going to live. Yes, there'll be results of sin, not as punishment but as reminder. In your house, it'll be there to remind you that you can't play with God. But the real result of sin, the punishment of sin, death, will be taken away. David, you're not going to die." Besides that, God didn't strike this union, either, with barrenness. Another son is born. And God came; God sent a messenger there and said, "I want to name this baby." He had two names. His name was Solomon, which you know means "Peaceful" or "Prince of peace." But he had another name, a name that his Father in heaven gave him very specially. His name was Jedidiah, "loved of Jehovah." Oh, beautiful! How beautiful! How amazingly beautiful! how God takes our sin and turns it around and says, "Here's what I've done, even when [sic] your sin." When we're able to fall down before God in penitence, in sorrow for sin, and say, "Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned and done this wickedness in Thy sight; take not Thy Holy Spirit from me. Wash me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. A broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise." [39:08] I want you this morning, Church of Christ, to stand with David. Not as the drama of the rich man who's played on the screen because if you stand with David then you're going to find the finger and say, "You got to DIE! You got to DIE!" But stand with David as God takes that finger and points it back and says, "That's YOU! That's YOU! You're going to die. You're going to die. The king has passed the sentence; there's no way out. Even if you make restitution, you're still going to die, and you can't make restitution. Sin breaks in such a way you can't put it back together. You can't put it back together. You can't go back before the sin and say, "Let's start all over and have nothing left of what we"--no, you can't do it. Uriah's dead. Bathsheba's pregnant. You can't do it. Sin always works that way. [40:31] But there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunged beneath that blood lose all their guilty stains. All their guilty stains. Takes away the sentence of death. Takes away the need of restitution. For there on Calvary's cross, and there in a life He lived, Jesus Christ restored all. He'll give Uriah his life back and his wife back. He'll restore it all the way it ought to be. He doesn't just say, "I'll take away your sin and give you a new start; see what you can make of it now." No. No. Then indeed, we could kind'a look at each other and say, "Well, you're not doing so good, are you; and, well, you're doing a little better; and"--no, no. He washes us clean. Sin, when God forgives it, is gone. One of the tragedies in the Church of Jesus Christ, one of the awful tragedies in the Church of Jesus Christ is, so often, sin is not considered gone when God forgives it. We play around with it yet; we talk about it yet; we create tragedy. [42:10] Today I want to hold before you David, a man after God's own heart, a beautiful king. A beautiful king. Why? He was a dirty sinner! He was a filthy sinner! He was a horrible murderer. He didn't even care when they come back and tell him, "Look, Uriah's dead and some others died with him,"--"Oh, well, the Lord takes one as well as the other." I hold before you David, a man after God's own heart, because God said, "David, you're mine," because David answered and said, "Lord, I'll bow before that miracle, that great and amazing miracle, that a sinner like me can find a sweet refuge by coming to Thee." That David I want you to see. [43:16] That David I'd like to have you join and stand with him under the cross of Christ. 'Cause when we stand together under the cross of Christ, we'll help each other along that way. We won't look around and say, "How'd you get here? What are you doing here?" We'll help each other along the way, sinners who have been saved. Once in a while when we dip into situation ethics--and we do--we think it's not bad for me, it's not sin for me, it's all right--even then, by God's grace, we'll help each other back to the cross, back to Calvary, back to the place where God says, "And your sins and your iniquities will I remember no more." [44:15] ...Father, we thank and praise Thee... [44:55 plus silence until 44:58] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ David: a Sinner with a Promise (edited slightly for grammar and clarity) Scripture: 2 Samuel 11:1-27; 12:1-15,24-25 Text: Psalm 51 Sermon by Rev. Harry Van Dyken Congregation beloved of the Lord Jesus Christ, Subsequent to the history that we read concerning David, this man after God's own heart penned Psalm 51. I want to read that psalm. [Read Psalm 51.] Psalm 51 is the public confession of a man of God, but more than that, it is the public testimony of amazing grace, the public testimony of a grace that's greater than all our sin, the public testimony of a man who could conclude his psalm by saying, "LORD, restore now what I broke; build it up again. Restore the walls of Zion. Do good in Thy good pleasure unto Jerusalem." For our sin, as David's sin, breaks, tears, and destroys. Sin is always that way, without any exception. The Lord Jesus Christ, when He was on earth, said, "I came not to bring the righteous but sinners to repentance." Christ was saying that there is no room in the Church of Jesus Christ for righteous people who are righteous in themselves, who have not sinned. Such SELF-righteous people have a righteousness which may look pretty good to men but is TOTALLY unacceptable to God. He just will not receive it. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God; there is none who does good--no--not so much as one. They have ALL turned aside; they have ALL together become filthy. There is none who seeks for God--no--not so much as one (Romans 3). David was a king of Israel, but David thought as many people think and as we all think at times. David thought that he occupied a special place, and so he could sin with impunity. He could sin without paying the consequences. He could sin without it really being sin because he was A KING. Because he was a king, he could take from those under him and do as he pleased. David's no stranger in that respect; that's always the way sin works; that's always the way the devil tempts. "It's not really bad for you; it's not really sin for you. In your situation, in your circumstance, in where you are and what you're doing"--in other words, rather than to face sin for what it really is and to face the wonderful and amazing grace of God, man would rather redefine sin. It becomes a lot easier to live, he thinks; it becomes a lot easier to exist in the midst of a society and of a culture that is rotten. It becomes a lot easier to adjust and to move. Situational ethics is a lot easier: you can weave your way through a lie. And David thought that. Situation ethics is not new. Situation ethics goes all the way back to Paradise when Satan came and said, "God doesn't understand the situation; but, Eve, you understand it. Because God doesn't understand the situation, He said, 'You'll die,' didn't He. No! In this situation, Eve, if you go ahead and eat of the fruit of the tree, you'll REALLY live, you'll know what life is." How many times has Satan said that? That's what he's said to you over and over and over again. "You'll REALLY know what life is if you just sin." The Lord Himself warned the seven churches in Asia Minor against those who said, "If you just dipped into the deep things of Satan, then you'd know what this is all about." "And," said Jezebel, the Jezebel of the New Testament, the Jezebel in Revelation--"And," said Jezebel, "then you could really be a Christian." God said to the church of Thyatira, "If you don't throw her out, I will; and all those who follow her with her will I throw into a bed of sickness. And I'll destroy her and her children with death." And, oh, Church of Christ, to redefine sin--David tried it. It was only tragedy. I want you to notice, "David: a sinner with a promise." I want you to see David's sin; I want you to notice Nathan's message, the king's sentence, and God's disposition. DAVID'S SIN "David: a sinner with a promise"--there is no question about his sin, is there? There really is no question, is there, that David was in such a special place that he could do those kind of things? There really is no question, is there, that we can redefine sin to fit the situation? that sin is different today than it was then, or different then that it is today? For sin is to transgress the law of a righteous and holy God. And that law of a righteous and holy God, as David found out, is not a willy-nilly, arbitrary something which God just decided, "Well, I'll think I'll make those ants down there that are crawling around there--I think I'll make them do THIS, and I think I'll make them do THAT, and I think that I will LIKE that. I will like to see that: how they are not able to do this, and how they are not able to do that--I think I'll like that." That is not the way it is. Jehovah God said, "I've made these in My image, Adam and Eve and ALL their children. And now for them really to show forth My image, I'll tell them how because through sin they've lost that knowledge. As I bring them back through the blood of My beloved Son, as I bring them back through that sacrifice which I will offer, I'll show them how to be My image. I'll show them where joy is, where happiness is, where the wonder of life is; I'll show them again. That eating of the fruit of that tree is death-dealing. Stay away from it!" Seeing the fence that God built around it and saying, "No, there's death there," will bring joy and happiness. And David said, "No, God, You don't understand. You don't understand. I NEED this. I'm a KING! It's all right for me." How often has that happened, Church of Christ, in your life? "It's all right for me: I'm somebody special. The situation demands it. It isn't bad after all." Redefining sin. David committed adultery. David committed adultery with the wife of a man who was fighting David's battles where David should have been. Then, because David defined sin the way he did, he had to get rid of that man because that man was in the way. That man wouldn't cooperate. So David had to get rid of that man. And he did. He had him murdered along with others. To cover up the murder, others were murdered with him. Joab was aware of the needless battle losses: Joab said, "Tell David this." David's sin was great. What shall we say, Church of Christ? "That's a greater sin than any of us have done." Then we've misunderstood. If we respond by comparing sin, then we've misunderstood. That's a danger in the Church of Jesus Christ. I know that we've often as a church shied away from talking publicly about public sins. God moved David to write a confession which we can read today. What do we say? What do we say when we read Psalm 51? "What a horrible, gruesome man that man David was!" No, we don't. We say, "What a wonder! What an amazing, amazing thing that David could tell us this about his life. He could put himself out and say, 'Look what GOD did! Look what GOD did! He took a sinner like me; He lets me write part of His Bible. He took a sinner like me. Later on, He remembered me in saying, "Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the son of Abraham."' Later on, there were blind people on the way to Jericho who were crying out, 'Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on us!' because somehow there's power in that name." David's sin was great. Sin today is great. Whether it is of a public nature, that we then must clear it away for everyone; or whether it's that which is between us and our God, or us and our family, or us and our neighbour; sin is great. We can't define it away. So I don't really think that there's anyone here who wants to define David's sin away, the sin of adultery, the sin of murder. NATHAN'S MESSAGE It was good, you see, when Nathan the prophet came to him, for God sent Nathan to him, and Nathan came with that message disguised. Nathan came to David and told him an allegory, a story in which David was the main actor but he didn't know it. So when Nathan had carefully told him all about what God had to say, masking David as the rich man, and after David looked at that whole enactment that Nathan held before him without recognizing the main actor--so when it was all finished, and David said as king, "That man shall surely die!"--then Nathan called to his attention, "Didn't you recognize yourself? YOU'RE that man!" You ever have that happen? God works with His Spirit in His Word in such a way that it happens to you? that God says, "YOU'RE that man!"? So easy to condemn others, isn't it? It's so easy to look at the sins of others and talk about how terrible they are. But when God displays the scene of sin before us, and we look at it and say, "Isn't that terrible? Isn't it horrible?"--then God says, "You're that man! Thou art the man!" In other words, the message of God's Word concerning sin comes home, the message that there is none righteous, that this is a total involvement for all of us, that--yes--there are relationships that have to be straightened out. DAVID'S REPENTANCE David had to do that too, and God insisted that David do that. And David did it in a beautiful way! In fact, David looked back, and when he finally saw himself there in that enactment, he said, "You know, I was born in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. I'm no good! I'm no good! Their king, that was me! That was David! I'm no good! But I have a great God! I have a wonderful Jehovah! And I can pray." David threw himself on the ground. He prayed and prayed: "Wash me with hyssop, and I shall be clean." Now the washing with hyssop was a very common thing in the Old Testament after God instituted the covenant in Exodus. God said that when the bird was killed and its blood put in the bowl, you dip with hyssop into that bowl, and you sprinkle the congregation, you sprinkle the altar, and that blood sanctifies. And in the Passover, the blood of the lamb was put in the basin, and with hyssop the people dipped into that blood and sprinkled it on the doorposts and on the lintel, and the angel of death didn't come in. "Oh," says David, "wash me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me with the blood of Christ, with the blood of the Lamb of God!" That's what John the Baptist was talking about when Jesus came into the world. John said, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" Please note that he didn't say, "Behold, the Lamb of God who will help HIDE the sin of the world, who will help REDEFINE the sin of the world, who will help MAKE EXCUSES for the sin of the world, who will help it so that we don't have to take sin so seriously, who will help in that we can dress sin in other clothes and it won't look so bad." Rather, Jesus was the Lamb of God who TAKES AWAY the sin of the world, knows what it is, recognizes it fully, and says, "I'll take it on My shoulders and carry it to the cross of Calvary where it will meet with the justice of God." "Wash me with hyssop, and I shall be clean." And a very critical matter, Church of Christ, a critical matter which sin brings--"Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me." David was a king; in the Old Testament the Spirit was not poured out on all flesh. The Holy Spirit did not come richly to all the church but came specially to kings and priests and prophets. And David is a king, and he has a special call from God, and he says, "Please don't take Thy Spirit away from me." What does David's petition mean for today? It means, Church of Christ, that with the pouring out of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament on Pentecost, every child of God is a king, a prophet, and a priest; but every child of God, because of sin, endangers the abiding presence of the Spirit of God. So his cry must go up with David's: "Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Cleanse me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Then sinners will learn of me, and transgressors will understand, and sinners will be converted unto Thee." GOD'S DISPOSITION See what David's saying? When people look at THIS man David and see the amazing grace of God, they'll say, "There's a place for me." That's what God wants, Church of Christ. That's what He wants with the whole Church of Jesus Christ: that men can see it's a place of saved sinners. God wants men to understand what sin is and to understand the deep need of forgiveness. He wants men to understand that God provides. Remember what the KING had said: King David passed sentence, "That man shall surely die. He shall restore fourfold." What a predicament, then, when Nathan replied, "You're the man!" How does a man restore somebody's life onefold, let alone fourfold? How could David give Uriah his life back? and his wife back? David tried with his monkey business to let Uriah keep his life, but God said, "No." And Uriah said, "No." (Oh, he didn't know it, but in his integrity he said, "No.") So tell me, how do you do it? How do you do it, People of God? How do we pay for sin? How do we restore, how do we make restitution? How do we get rid of results of sin? Yet that's the sentence: "He shall die, and he shall restore fourfold." That's the king's sentence, and it came from God: the sentence of death for sin, the sentence of restitution. How do you do that? How do you do it? How do you move from Second Samuel twelve verses fourteen and fifteen, "'Howbeit, by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die,' and Nathan departed unto his house, and the LORD struck the child that Uriah's wife bare unto David, and it was very sick"--how do you come from there to verse 24, "And David comforted Bathsheba his wife, and went in unto her, and lay with her, and she bare a son and called his name Solomon, and the LORD loved him. And he sent by the hand of Nathan the prophet and called his name Jedidiah, because of the LORD." That name JEDIDIAH means simply, "Loved of Jehovah." How do we get away from, "I was born in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me"? If our heart is perverse, then we cannot seek God. And yet we come to the place where we can say, "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise." Somehow we come to a place where we can say, "I've borne a son, and his name is Jedidiah, Loved of Jehovah." That transition, Church of Christ, is what God brought about, God's disposition. "David, you're not going to die." "Why not?" "Because you saw your sin, David. Because seeing your sin for what it really is, you humbled yourself before God, you confessed your sin. You said, 'God be merciful to me a sinner.' You're not going to die, David; you're going to live. Yes, there'll be results of sin, not as punishment but as reminder. In your house, they will be there to remind you that you can't play with God. But the real result of sin, the punishment of sin, death, will be taken away. David, you're not going to die." Besides David's life, God didn't strike his union, either, with barrenness. Another son was born to Bathsheba. And God came; God sent a messenger there and said, "I want to name this baby." He had two names. You know his name SOLOMON, which means "Peaceful" or "Prince of peace." His other name was a name that his Father in heaven gave him very specially, JEDIDIAH, "loved of Jehovah." Oh, beautiful! How beautiful! How amazingly beautiful that God takes our sin and turns it around and says, "Here's what I've done, even with your sin." How beautiful when we're able to fall down before God in penitence, in sorrow for sin, and say, "Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned and done this wickedness in Thy sight; take not Thy Holy Spirit from me. Wash me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. A broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise." I want you this morning, Church of Christ, to stand with David. Wait until after the drama of the rich man is played on the screen because if you stand with David too early you're going to point the finger and say, "You got to DIE! You got to DIE!" Instead, stand with David as God takes that finger and points it back and says, "That's YOU! That's YOU! You're going to die. The king has passed the sentence; there's no way out. Even if you make restitution, you're still going to die, and you can't make restitution. Sin breaks in such a way you can't put it back together. You can't go back before the sin and say, 'Let's start all over and have nothing left of what we'--no, you can't do it. Uriah's dead. Bathsheba's pregnant. You can't do it. Sin always works that way." But there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel's veins, and sinners plunged beneath that blood lose all their guilty stains. ALL their guilty stains. Takes away the sentence of death. Takes away the need of restitution. For there on Calvary's cross, and there in a life He lived, Jesus Christ restored all. He'll give Uriah his life back and his wife back. He'll restore it all the way it ought to be. He doesn't just say, "I'll take away your sin and give you a new start; see what you can make of it now." No, for then indeed we could kind of look at each other and say, "Well, you're not doing so good, are you; and, well, you're doing a little better; and"--no, no. He washes us clean. Sin, when God forgives it, is gone. One of the tragedies in the Church of Jesus Christ, one of the awful tragedies in the Church of Jesus Christ is, so often, sin is not considered gone when God forgives it. We play around with it yet; we talk about it yet; we create tragedy. Today I want to hold before you David, a man after God's own heart, a beautiful king. A BEAUTIFUL king. Why? Wasn't he a filthy sinner? Wasn't he a horrible murderer? He didn't even care when a messenger told him, "Look, Uriah's dead, and some others died with him,"--"Oh, well, the sword takes one as well as the other." I hold before you David as a man after God's own heart because God said, "David, you're mine," and because David answered and said, "Lord, I'll bow before that miracle, that great and amazing miracle, that a sinner like me can find a sweet refuge by coming to Thee." That David I want you to see. That David I'd like to have you join; stand with him under the cross of Christ. When we stand together under the cross of Christ, we'll help each other along His way. We won't look around and say, "How'd you get here? What are you doing here?" We'll help each other along the way, sinners who have been saved. Once in a while when we dip into situation ethics--and we do--we think it's not bad for me, it's not sin for me, it's all right--even then, by God's grace, we'll help each other back to the cross, back to Calvary, back to the place where God says, "And your sins and your iniquities will I remember NO MORE." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ LOG OF MY EDITING PROCESS original had been recorded by Grandpa himself (large mailing list) I worked with a copy; didn't have the master; did the following work in January and February of 2007 Jan. 12 transcribed with Sony TC-W530 stereo cassette deck, DolbyB on, Sony STR-AV570 FM/AM stereo receiver, preset 1, attenuation 57, Audacity line volume 0.5, mono, 11025 Hz, 32-bit float; had recently cleaned the head with a cotton swab and rubbing alcohol; no adjustments for a consistent and correct speed made transcription managed by a Pentium III (genuine Intel) computer with sixty-four megabytes of RAM, a Windows 98 (second edition) operating system, and a Creative Sound Blaster AudioPCI 128D Windows 9X Driver. The driver had a date of 6-15-2000. Creative Sound Blaster AudioPCI 128D sound controller, hardware version 006, set to "full" hardware acceleration and "good" (not "best") sample rate conversion quality. Codec Information AC97 Vendor CRY Revision 3. Legacy emulation enabled. Jan. 13 was 45:07 without initial and terminal silence; slowed 2% to 46:03 Jan. 13 began shortening pauses and deleting coughs and small w-shaped, low-pitched pops (pops were preceded and followed by gentler ripples and probably came from the master)(perhaps came from copying if tapes were all copied at same time from the one master since pops are in the same places in the copies)(should have used the editing technique "find zero crossings" to avoid clicks but was not aware of it) used high-pass filter with cut-off frequency of 150 Hz or 300 Hz to remove some pops sometimes adjusted amplitude to reduce coughs or other interruptions mixed with the speaker's words Feb. 17 was 44:54 without initial and terminal silence; added elapsed time marker to end of every paragraph of the written transcript Feb. 19 I selected and labelled all the words in the concluding section so as to prepare for noise reduction in the intervening pauses. Feb. 20 normalized in turn each of the nine sections, including in normalization the removal of the d. c. offset, centring on zero vertically. I should have removed the d. c. offset before using effects such as the high-pass filter because these resulted in new, localized offsets when the original offset was removed. Before normalizing a section, I used "amplify" to reduce peaks that stuck out above the rest. Because I had to paste in the last three minutes of the sermon from a back-up because of an error that I made, the concluding section of the sermon was normalized in two three-minute sections (division at forty-two minutes). Feb. 21 reduced the noise in the last section (six minutes) by three decibels, proceeding in one-decibel steps for each pause and fading out by about 0.1 s for each step. I did this by splitting the track at each label selection, working with one minute at a time and thus creating a large number of tracks for that minute. I selected the whole minute of the original track (now without any words) and reduced the amplitude by one decibel. Then I worked with each pause in turn to reduce it by two more decibels. Finally I selected each of the pieces that I had cut out of the original track and pasted them back in. The Audacity 1.2 (1.2.4 and 1.2.6) digital audio editor was used for the transcription and all editing of the audio material. I had in December 2006 keyed in a text file of the sermon that could be read along with the audio version. Feb. 21 used labels to export multiple MP3 and Ogg Vorbis files; Ogg Vorbis quality 0 was fine; MP3 bitrate 16 kbps resulted in annoying artifacts but 32 kbps was fine; used the LAME version 3.96 Feb. 22 edited the ID3 tags using Music Match and Real Player Feb. 22 used previous notes to key in Web page http://seanolonger.googlepages.com/home where sermon can be accessed 00:00 0 0_2Sam11 2 Sam. 11:1-27 05:15 315 1_2Sam12 2 Sam. 12:1-15,24-25 08:30 510 2_song55 Psalter Hymnal 55:1-3,5 12:37 757 3_Psalm51 Psalm 51 15:51 951 4_intro introduction 21:52 1312 5_DavidSin David's Sin 27:27 1647 6_NathMess Nathan's Message 29:21.5 1761.5 7_DavidRep David's Repentance 33:14 1994 8_GodDispo God's Disposition 39:08 2348 9_concl conclusion The following are the Audacity labels (elapsed time in seconds) for discrete phrases in the conclusion of the sermon (last section). Exporting labels with Audacity version 2 only allows the beginning of each labelled selection to be saved; the end marker is discarded. However, Audacity beta 1.3.2 did the job right. 2349.644898 2353.049977 2353.351950 2353.526349 2354.818413 2355.986576 2356.479274 2361.830023 2362.194286 2363.521088 2364.628753 2365.199093 2366.436281 2370.642721 2371.223764 2371.771066 2372.806531 2373.322086 2378.976508 2379.650612 2378.976508 2379.698503 2381.919637 2382.620590 2386.004898 2388.015601 2389.810794 2390.667029 2393.028934 2397.425488 2398.234558 2401.682721 2403.164444 2404.755011 2405.280000 2406.539320 2407.228299 2412.094331 2412.837007 2413.887347 2416.989025 2417.915646 2421.365624 2422.519728 2425.101859 2425.777052 2428.451701 2429.986032 2431.666939 2431.972426 2432.185760 2439.113651 2439.547574 2442.796553 2444.002902 2444.104490 2444.825215 2446.663401 2449.396825 2451.546122 2452.562358 2458.775510 2459.184943 2460.139683 2460.862404 2462.268662 2463.058503 2465.271293 2465.946485 2466.943129 2467.730068 2470.874558 2471.454331 2476.470204 2476.802902 2477.179501 2478.468209 2478.650703 2479.688526 2481.023129 2481.765986 2483.578050 2483.906032 2485.956644 2486.476916 2487.959365 2488.305488 2488.971610 2490.842268 2491.160454 2493.634467 2495.407166 2496.266281 2499.062146 2499.547574 2503.038549 2503.655329 2503.811338 2505.254603 2505.874286 2506.250884 2509.587256 2510.094512 2510.204807 2511.603084 2512.132789 2512.560181 2513.309025 2513.652245 2513.853243 2514.831746 2518.275918 2520.433197 2521.731156 2522.001270 2522.146395 2522.258866 2522.430113 2523.096236 2524.458231 2525.807891 2526.290068 2526.787120 2528.025034 2530.692426 2531.277279 2533.568617 2536.716190 2537.634286 2538.912653 2539.663311 2541.426213 2542.756644 2543.869388 2545.280363 2546.447528 2547.565714 2548.219138 2548.615692 2548.694059 2549.569887 2550.637460 2552.738685 2553.109116 2553.367075 2556.071837 2556.555828 2561.650431 2566.202812 2567.961542 2569.581859 2571.350385 2572.113016 2574.502313 2574.966712 2577.471927 2580.580136 2582.417415 2583.770703 2585.730249 2586.504127 2590.800907 2593.692517 2595.322268 2596.611156 2599.676735 2600.785850 2602.515737 2603.140499 2606.100317 2606.946939 2608.868571 2609.467937 2612.051519 2612.942585 2613.661315 2615.426757 2617.207800 2618.221497 2619.800272 2621.391202 2624.512109 2625.385578 2625.979864 2627.791020 2631.437098 2632.553107 2633.475737 2634.717823 2638.105397 2639.580590 2640.800181 2641.939229 2644.350204 2644.695692 2646.285351 2646.805986 2648.305488 2648.559456 2649.793379 2650.072925 2651.043991 2656.393651 2658.063673 2659.874467 2661.698685 2662.942041 2667.032381 2670.886893 2672.349751 2674.464581 2675.567528 2676.919909 2679.400091 2680.811247 2683.374785 2684.231111 2686.155465 2687.910204 2688.400544