Here are some notes from the exposition from last Sunday’s sermon, “Sin Has Consequences” from 2 Samuel 12:15-31:
And Nathan departed unto his house. And the LORD struck the child that
Uriah's wife bare unto David, and it was very sick (2 Samuel 12:15).
No
sooner does Nathan leave David after their confrontation than the child born of
David’s illicit relationship with Bathsheba is stricken (v. 15). Notice the active agency of the LORD in
meting out this punishment. Many times
we speak with much more reticence about such things. We make God out to be a passive agent. God allowed thus and such to happen. God permitted thus and such to happen. And
perhaps that is indeed the right language to use, because we are not
inspired like the writer of 2 Samuel so as to know the mind of God. But here we need to pay heed to the fact that
the inspired reader does not describe God acting as a passive agent but as an
active agent. “And the LORD struck the
child….”
I can
just hear the cultured despisers of the Biblical God (the type of people who
believe themselves to be more righteous than God and more ethical than God and
who sets themselves up as God’s judges) now saying something like: “I just can’t believe in a God who would
strike down innocent children.” But that
child was not an innocent child. From the moment of his conception he was a
sinner, and the wrath of God was abiding upon him. If you do not have a doctrine of “original
sin” you have no way to explain why there are miscarriages and the early death
of infants.
It is
likely no coincidence that when David composed Psalm 51, his psalm of penitence, he wrote:
Psalm
51:5 Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.
I
think David might have written that line as he reflected not only on his own
sinful state, but also on the sinful state of his dear child who was justly
stricken by the LORD. That child was
stricken by the LORD because of the sin of his first parent Adam but also
because of his near parent David. The
notion that children are pure blank slates that are only corrupted by the ills
of culture and society is the thinking of the French Philosopher Jeanne-Jacques
Rousseau and not Scripture—certainly not a chastened and penitent David.
Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle
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