Godly rebuke

2 Samuel 12:1–13 “And the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.” Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.” Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘I anointed you…”

Introduction and Context

I’m sure there are many times in our life where we have been in a situation where we see one of our brothers/sisters committing a sin, doing something they’re not supposed to do either to themselves, other people or you and had the internal desire to say something to them and tell them that what they did was wrong. And sometimes you have gone up to them and confronted them but then the situation’s gone worse and then you kind of are left confused as to why because you think what you did was right by correcting them but it doesn’t seem or feel that way because the way they reacted was actually worse.

And if I was going to blunt and simply answer this question, there’s just simply a right way to rebuke and a wrong way, with the right way being the godly way and the wrong way being the sinful way.

And so today we are going to be answering 2 question:

How do we rebuke godly to our brothers and sisters?

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Before we go into this, why did the Lord have to send Nathan to David and say these things in the first place? - What is the context

Talk about Bathsheba and all of Chapter 11

Then the very last verse says that “But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord”.

2 Samuel 12:1 “And the Lord sent Nathan to David.

Pre-requisites of rebuking

Sent by God not by us

We see that the Lord had sent Nathan to rebuke him

Who is Nathan ? - EXPLAIN

The reason that being sent by the “Lord” is so significant is because GOD is telling Nathan to go. We see that Nathan (whilst I suspect that he probably did have the desire to tell him he is wrong because he was his advisor) didn’t act on his own accord and desire to correct but ONLY went because God told him to go FIRST.

Why? because Nathan understands that if he acted on his own accord and how he wanted to rebuke David it would be driven by his own sinful desires and wanting to fix things his own way, as opposed to aligning with God’s will and ultimate goal.

Now if we were to rebuke people when they sin without first recognising that we are sent by God, what will happen is that you won’t be rebuking them with the ultimate goal in mind - which is for that person to repent and come back to God, but you will actually be doing it because of your own sinful desires which I think can either be from:

Pure anger (if they’ve done the sin to you) or that it gives you a feeling that you are better than that person (if they’ve done the sin to themselves or other someone else).

And what this will do is not direct the person to repent for their sins and turn back to God, but actually do the complete opposite and turn them and also you away from God because what you are doing is actually battling sin with sin.

Sin vs Sin is a win-win for Sin, God vs Sin is God winning and sin losing.

And this is the reason why in those situations where you do confront someone from sinning that the situation gets worse because what you are essentially doing is just adding to the sin.

And so how do we stop ourselves to be sin led and to be God led instead?

We have to pray, and this is a requirement - because one of the most significant reasons why we pray is because praying “realigns our heart and will” to God’s heart and will which tells 2 things

Prayer tells us to the correct action to take which is not our own sinful desires (which is either the anger or the desire to be better than other people), but God’s desire and will

Prayer reminds us that we too are also sinners in front of an almighty God and do not have the ability to judge other people who are also sinners

So we should always first recognise that we are sent by the Lord so that we the following actions are aligned with his character and his will as opposed to our character and our will.

God’s will and our goal

What is God’s will which therefore should be our goal?

It is for that person to repent for their sins and turn back to God AND because we are being led by God, then the way we go about it should be led by Godly characteristics - which the most significant one is love.

A lot of the time we think that theres 1 specific way of rebuking others and I think the big reason is because whatever that 1 specific way is, it is actually the way we personally would like to receive it and take it and then we think that this works for everyone - but that’s not doing it out of love because if you were to do it out of love then we would understand that not everyone has the same characteristics as us

We would need to understand their personalities, their life, their circumstances, all these things and then find a way that will not stray away from the goal of turning them back to God but reshape it in a way that strikes their heart.

And because the goal is for them (and not you) specifically to turn back to God, we’ve got to figure out a way that gets to that point:

And over the years I’ve realised that there exists a general idea where if the sin seems

Deliberate or repeated - Then the rebuke is generally more on the straight-forward and serious side because if it is deliberate, this means that they very well know what sin is and it’s consequences. And so the goal of this is to remind the person of sin

Unaware - Because they don’t know sin, or know very little of the consequences of sin - if we rebuked in a serious way then more often than not this would actually turn them away from God and so the rebuke is more characterised as patient and more focused on teaching why it is wrong. And so the goal of this is to teach sin.

How do we rebuke?

Reveal the nature of sin - Read 2 Samuel 12:1-4

Nathan first reveals the nature of David’s sin by using a parable which is similar to what David has done.

Because David is very aware of what sin is, Nathan reminds David in a straight-forward and serious parable:

Explain the story - Rich man has alot of sheep, Poor man only has one lamb, when guest comes the rich man steals the poor man’s sheep to eat for dinner

Nathan was making a story that had a definite moral ending which David would not have failed to understand as wrong. Nathan orchestrated a parable where he definitely knew how David would answer

In the same way, we can also do the same thing by creating a parable or a real-life example where you know how they will answer.

A few weeks ago when I talked about how serious sin is - I asked you guys to think of the worst thing that someone could ever do to you and how it would make you feel if they did it over and over again. I knew that you guys were going to all answer in the same way - that it would be very hard to forgive, almost impossible .

For you guys reaching out to someone you see sinning, think of a parable specific to their sin where you know how they will answer and what they will say

And so no matter the way you go about it, the first step is to reveal the nature of how bad sin truly is, where one of the best ways we can reveal it is through parables

Understand that they are sinful - Read 2 Samuel 12:5-12

and then I pointed out that this was only a glimpse of the effect of us sinning does to God. And so through the parable, my hope wasn’t to reveal to you what sin because you guys know that, but rather it was to remind you how detrimental it really was - and so I took more of the straight-forward/serious route

But for you guys when you are at school and clearly seeing someone (who knows very little or doesn’t know sin at all) who is sinning, it is more loving to first teach what sin is

Repent - Read 2 Samuel 12:13

And so in the same way for us, even if we are doing it in a straight-forward/serious (deliberate) or teaching (unaware),

What happens if we don’t see them immediately repent?

Now one thing that you might be scared about is that when you do rebuke them (even if you know that it is in a loving way) that they will react in a bad way and will not accept it. But what we have to realise is that because we are being sent by the Lord, this means that what we say is the truth and the gospel and sometimes we have an expectation that it is us that has the power to change, but it’s not it is the information that is said that has the power.

Vaccination example

Imagine you are a nurse and you are tasked with injecting a vaccination onto your child who doesn’t really want it and hates needles. Because you know that the vaccination is beneficial for them and even though it defintitely will hurt them for a bit you will still inject them because you know that it is good for them.

To parallel this with rebuking

The nurse is the one rebuking - because you are doing something that you know will help them

The vaccination is the gospel - because in the same way the vaccination is the thing that is actually helping them, it is the gospel truth that is actually helping them

The baby is the person who are doing this to - Even if it does hurt for a bit, you do this because you care and love them

Also takes time - yes in the passage it was immediate but I think there exists a another relationship where the more the person understands what sin is, the less time it takes, the less the person understands what sin is, the more time it takes.

Conclusion

Godly rebuke isn’t done based on our own feelings and decisions, but it is God led, and God empowered and in turn loving and restores.