Seen and Beloved
Nothing Left to Prove: Living Within the Father’s Verdict • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Introduction: Water behind the drywall
Introduction: Water behind the drywall
1. Before the break, you wrote a sentence on a card.
a. God is pleased with me.
No when. No clause on the end.
b. And underneath it: *I am his son. I have his name. His Spirit lives in me. I'm in the will.*
c. Some of you believed it the minute you wrote it. Some of you have been arguing with it ever since.
2. I want to talk about the thing that you setthat card down and quietly decide it was written for somebody else.
a. Usually it's the sin nobody knows about.
3. Anybody here ever had a slow leak behind a wall?
a. A fitting starts weeping behind the drywall, a drop at a time, and life goes on in the room like nothing's wrong.
b. By the time you see the stain on the ceiling, it's been going for months. The subfloor is soft. There's mold in the insulation. What would have been a ten-dollar fix is now a contractor and a dumpster in the driveway.
c. The water was never the worst of it. The worst of it was the dark. Nobody could see it, so nobody could fix it.
4. Secret sin works the same way. It doesn't stay the size it was the day it started. It grows in the dark, and it grows fastest in men who have nowhere to say it out loud.
5. So this session has two scenes in it.
a. First, a king who spent a year hiding, and a God who came looking for him.
b. Then a river, where the Father says something over his Son that explains why sons don't have to hide anymore.
c. Turn to 2 Samuel 11.
The Man Nobody Sees
The Man Nobody Sees
1. Here's how it starts:
1 In the spring when kings march out to war, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah, but David remained in Jerusalem.
2 One evening David got up from his bed and strolled around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing—a very beautiful woman.
2. Notice how ordinary this is.
a. It's the season when kings go to war, and this king stayed home. He's getting up from bed in the evening with time on his hands.
b. Most men who fall do it on the couch, on a Tuesday, with the phone in their hand and nothing in particular to do.
3. Now watch one verb run through the chapter.
a. Verse 1, David *sent* Joab. Verse 3, David *sent* someone to ask about her. Verse 4, he *sent* messengers to get her. Verse 6, he *sent* for Uriah. Verse 14, he wrote a letter and *sent* it.
b. This morning we watched God send his Son and then send his Spirit. Here's a man doing all the sending himself, every message out of the palace an attempt to manage the outcome.
4. Verse 3 is a warning, and David hears it.
3 So David sent someone to inquire about her, and he said, “Isn’t this Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam and wife of Uriah the Hethite?”
a. Uriah isn't a stranger. He's listed among David's mighty men in 2 Samuel 23:39. He bled for David back when David was hiding in caves.
b. God gave David an exit ramp, and he drove right past it.
c. And be careful here, because the text is. This is the king. He sends, and she's brought. When Nathan tells the story later, it's the rich man who takes the lamb. The guilt lands on David.
5. Then verse 5. *I am pregnant.* Three words, and the real work starts.
5 The woman conceived and sent word to inform David, “I am pregnant.”
6. Plan A: bring Uriah home so he'll spend the night with his wife. Uriah sleeps at the palace door instead:
11 Uriah answered David, “The ark, Israel, and Judah are dwelling in tents, and my master Joab and his soldiers are camping in the open field. How can I enter my house to eat and drink and sleep with my wife? As surely as you live and by your life, I will not do this!”
a. The foreigner is the one with a conscience in this chapter.
b. Plan B: get him drunk. He still doesn't go home. Uriah is a better man drunk than David is sober.
c. Plan C: a letter to Joab. *Put Uriah at the front of the fiercest fighting, then withdraw from him.* And David has Uriah carry his own death warrant to the front.
7. Here's what every man in this room needs to see.
a. The adultery was one night. The cover-up took weeks, and it cost Uriah's life, and the lives of other soldiers who fell in that assault, verse 17, and Joab's integrity when he went along with it.
b. The cover-up nearly always costs more than the sin, and it takes better men down with it.
c. Listen to how David talks when the news comes back.
25 David told the messenger, “Say this to Joab: ‘Don’t let this matter upset you because the sword devours all alike. Intensify your fight against the city and demolish it.’ Encourage him.”
That's what hiding does to a man's language. It teaches him to talk about murder like it's a scheduling problem.
8. Then the chapter's last line:
27 When the time of mourning ended, David had her brought to his house. She became his wife and bore him a son. However, the Lord considered what David had done to be evil.
a. As far as Jerusalem knew, the king had taken in a war widow. A sad story with a decent ending.
b. *However.* One word, and the man nobody sees has been seen the whole time.
The Year of Silence
The Year of Silence
1. How long did this go on?
a. Pregnancy, Uriah's death, the time of mourning, the move into the palace, the birth. By the time anybody says a word to David, the child has been born.
b. That's the better part of a year. A year of leading worship and hearing cases at the city gate and walking past that roof.
2. What was that year like on the inside? Turn to Psalm 32.
3 When I kept silent, my bones became brittle from my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was drained as in the summer’s heat. Selah
a. The heading doesn't tie this psalm to Bathsheba the way Psalm 51's does. But it's David, it's a man who kept silent about a sin, and it reads like it was written from inside that year.
b. He's describing a body under the weight of a thing he won't name.
3. Men know this one physically before they know it theologically.
a. You wake up at three in the morning and your mind goes straight to it. You're short with your kids and can't say why. Your jaw's tight.
b. You get busy. A man with a secret keeps his calendar full, because quiet is where it finds him.
c. And somebody at church asks how you're doing, and you say *fine.*
4. David thought silence was protecting him. It was eating him.
a. *Your hand was heavy on me.* God wasn't absent that year. He was pressing.
b. That heaviness was mercy, the hand of a Father who won't let his son get comfortable in the dark. If you're feeling it this morning, it may be the most loving thing God is doing in your life right now.
"You Are the Man"
"You Are the Man"
1. Back to 2 Samuel 12, and look at the first line:
1 So the Lord sent Nathan to David. When he arrived, he said to him: There were two men in a certain city, one rich and the other poor.
a. There's the verb again. All through chapter 11, David was doing the sending. Now God sends.
b. David wasn't looking for a way back. He'd had a year to build his cover story and he'd built it well. God came to him anyway.
2. Nathan tells a story about a poor man with one little ewe lamb, raised with his children, sleeping in his arms. A rich man with flocks of his own takes it to feed a guest.
5 David was infuriated with the man and said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die!
6 Because he has done this thing and shown no pity, he must pay four lambs for that lamb.”
7 Nathan replied to David, “You are the man!
a. David sentences himself. A man carrying a hidden sin is often the harshest judge in the room. The anger has to go somewhere.
b. Then God's word through Nathan goes straight at the secret.
12 You acted in secret, but I will do this before all Israel and in broad daylight.’ ”
3. Now verse 13. This is where everything turns this morning.
13 David responded to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Then Nathan replied to David, “And the Lord has taken away your sin; you will not die.
a. In Hebrew, David's confession is two words. No speech about the pressures a king is under.
b. And the answer comes right back. A year of engineering, undone by two honest words.
c. Be honest about what forgiveness does and doesn't do. The child died, and the sword didn't leave David's house. Forgiveness settles where you stand with God. It doesn't always stop the consequences. Some of you are living with consequences right now, and that doesn't mean you're unforgiven. David was forgiven, and he still buried a son.
4. Now read what came out on the other side:
1 How joyful is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered!
5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not conceal my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah
a. *Covered* in verse 1 and *conceal* in verse 5 are the same Hebrew word.
b. As long as David kept covering his sin, God wouldn't cover it. The day David stopped, God covered it completely.
c. And verse 7:
7 You are my hiding place; you protect me from trouble. You surround me with joyful shouts of deliverance. Selah
The man who started out hiding from God ends up hiding in him.
5. One more thing from these chapters. Somebody had to come find him. David didn't wake up one morning and confess on his own. It took a Nathan.
Beloved, Before You Did Anything
Beloved, Before You Did Anything
1. Here's the question underneath all of that. Why did David hide in the first place?
a. Because a king's standing rested on his record. His name, his reputation, the whole kingdom's picture of the man after God's heart. He had too much to lose.
b. Most of us hide for the same reason. We think our standing with God is only as good as our record, so the record has to look clean.
2. So now I want to take you to a river. Turn to Mark 1.
9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized in the Jordan by John.
10 As soon as he came up out of the water, he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.
11 And a voice came from heaven: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well-pleased.”
3. Count what Jesus has done publicly at this point.
a. He hasn't preached a sermon. That starts in verse 14. He hasn't called a disciple. That's verse 16.
b. Nobody's been healed. No crowds. There's no cross yet.
c. If Jesus had written a résumé that morning, the ministry section would have been blank.
d. And the Father says, *You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.*
4. Somebody's thinking it. *He'd lived thirty years without sin. Of course the Father was pleased.*
a. That's true, and don't lose it. He's the only man who ever stood in that river with nothing to confess.
b. But listen to what the Father says first. *You are my beloved Son.* The relationship comes before the approval in the sentence.
c. Everything Jesus does from verse 14 to the end of the book, he does as a Son who has already heard it. For Jesus, the Father's approval was the starting block.
5. Look at how the Father gets the word to him.
a. Matthew and Luke say the heavens were opened. Mark uses a rougher word. *Torn.*
b. It sounds like a Father in a hurry to get to his Son.
c. We've watched God do that all morning. He sent his Son. He sent his Spirit into our hearts. He sent Nathan to a king who'd had a year to build his cover story. And here he tears the sky to speak to his Son. God keeps coming down to men who could never find their way up to him.
6. And listen to the words.
a. Matthew has *This is my beloved Son,* an announcement to the bank. Mark gives it the way Jesus heard it. *You are.* The Father said it to his face.
b. *You are my Son* comes from Psalm 2:7, where God crowns his King. *With you I am well pleased* reaches back to Isaiah 42:1, where God introduces his Servant.
c. And Isaiah's Servant has a road in front of him that runs to Isaiah 53. *He was pierced because of our rebellion.* The Father tells his Son he's pleased with him knowing exactly where the road ends.
7. So what does Jesus' baptism have to do with yours?
a. Remember Galatians 3:27 from this morning.
27 For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ.
And Ephesians 1:6 says God's grace was
6 to the praise of his glorious grace that he lavished on us in the Beloved One.
b. Nobody heard a voice from the sky when you came up out of the water. But you came up in Christ, clothed with the Beloved Son.
c. The Father's pleasure over you rests on the Son you're wearing. That's why it holds on your worst Tuesday. It was never resting on your Tuesday in the first place.
Sons Can Tell the Truth
Sons Can Tell the Truth
1. Now put the two scenes side by side.
a. Think about a hired hand who breaks something in the barn. He hides it and hopes nobody notices before payday, because his place on that farm depends on his record.
b. A son breaks something, and he can walk into the kitchen and say *Dad, I broke it.* It'll cost him something. It won't cost him his place at the table.
c. David hid like a hired hand. The river tells you you're a son.
d. *There is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus,* Romans 8:1. Hired hands hide. Sons can tell the truth.
2. Which brings us to James:
16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is very powerful in its effect.
3. *If God forgives me when I confess to him, why tell anybody else?*
a. Your forgiveness is settled at the cross. Telling a brother adds nothing to what Jesus did.
b. But James doesn't say *so that you may be forgiven.* He says *so that you may be healed.* Pardon comes from God. Healing usually needs another human being in the room.
c. Secrecy is what keeps a hidden sin alive. As long as nobody knows, it has you to itself. Say it out loud to a brother who loves you and it loses the dark. Almost every man who's done this will tell you it shrank the second he heard himself say it.
d. And now somebody's praying for you by name, and he'll ask you about it on a Tuesday.
5. So who do you tell?
a. James isn't asking you to confess to the whole congregation. Pick one brother. A faithful man who's walking with God himself, who'll keep it and pray about it and tell you the truth back. Galatians 6:1 says to restore a brother *with a gentle spirit.*
b. If what you're carrying has hurt somebody else, or has legal weight, or has become something you can't stop, the first conversation still matters. It won't be the last. A good brother will help you with the next step, whether that's an elder, a counselor, or making something right, and he'll walk it with you.
6. And some of you need this from the other side. Somebody's going to come to you, maybe this week.
a. When he does, don't flinch, don't lecture, and don't repeat it.
b. Be a Nathan. Nathan told David the truth, and Nathan was also the one who said *the LORD has taken away your sin.* He carried both.
Expect the "If"
Expect the "If"
1. Go back to Mark 1 for two more verses:
12 Immediately the Spirit drove him into the wilderness.
13 He was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and the angels were serving him.
2. *Immediately.* The water's barely off him, and he goes from the Father's voice straight into the devil's.
a. Matthew tells us the first thing the tempter said. *If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread,* Matthew 4:3.
b. The Father had just said *You are.* The devil comes back with *if you are.* He goes straight after the verdict.
c. Jesus doesn't make bread to settle the question. Three times he answers *It is written.* He goes back to what his Father said. A son who knows who he is doesn't audition for the devil.
3. You've had a good day. Expect the *if.*
a. It might come Monday when your boss's name pops up on your phone. It might come at three in the morning in that old familiar voice: *If you were really his son, you wouldn't still be struggling with that.*
b. It'll almost certainly come the first time you stumble after this weekend, and you will stumble.
c. And it may come the night before the date on your card, telling you that if you say it out loud they'll know what kind of man you really are.
d. When it comes, don't try to prove anything. Go back to what the Father said.
4. Jesus heard that word *if* one more time, at the end:
39 Those who passed by were yelling insults at him, shaking their heads
40 and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross!”
a. The wilderness at the start, the cross at the end, and the same challenge. *Prove it.*
b. He stayed up there. Hebrews 12:2 says
2 keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Shame is the crowd's verdict. He counted it light, because at a river three years earlier he'd heard a different verdict, and it was the one that stood.
c. And Mark closes the loop. When Jesus dies, *the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom,* Mark 15:38. It's the same word as the sky at the Jordan. Then the centurion at the foot of the cross says what the Father said first. *Truly this man was the Son of God.*
5. Now, Hebrews 12:3
3 For consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, so that you won’t grow weary and give up.
a. Some of you are tired in a way a night's sleep won't fix. You've been running on applause a long time, and applause runs out.
b. He ran the whole race with the verdict already in hand. That's how sons run.
Conclusion: One Name, One Conversation, One Date
Conclusion: One Name, One Conversation, One Date
1. Get the card out and turn it over.
a. The front says who you are. On the back I want you to write three things.
2. First, one name.
a. One man you'll tell the true version to, the one you've never told anybody.
b. Maybe he's in this room. Maybe he's a friend back home you've known twenty years and never been fully honest with.
c. **[Pause. Let it be quiet.]**
3. Second, one conversation. You don't have to script it. David did it in two words.
4. Third, a date, before next Sunday. A man without a date has a good intention. A man with a date has a plan.
5. Nobody's collecting these cards I'm not asking anybody to stand or come forward or say anything in front of this room. What you do with the card is between you, the man whose name is on it, and God.
a. **[Name two or three men who'll be available the rest of the day. Confirm them with the Waterford leaders ahead of time.]** If you need to talk before you leave, these brothers will make time, and they know how to keep a confidence.
6. Now think about Monday morning, because it's coming early.
a. The alarm goes off, and for most of us the first thought is a list of everybody we need to keep happy. Start somewhere else Monday. Start with what's already been said.
b. There's the email you've been afraid to send, the honest number or the *no* you should have said a month ago. The worst reply it could get can't touch where you stand with God.
c. Some of you have sons and daughters at the breakfast table waiting on the sentence you waited on from your own father. Tell them you're proud of them this week, before they've done anything to earn it. You heard today how the Father does it.
d. And there's the date on the back of this card. A hired hand would put that conversation off until he'd built up enough credit to survive it. A son can pick up the phone.
7. Put the card where you'll see it Monday. The dash of your truck, the bathroom mirror, your wallet in front of your license.
a. The front says who you are. The back says what you're going to do.
b. You'll be able to do the back because the front is true.
8. Let me read it one more time, and hear it the way a son in Christ gets to hear it.
11 And a voice came from heaven: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well-pleased.”
a. The Father said it before the first sermon, before the first miracle, before the cross.
b. You came here Friday night auditioning. Go home a son, with nothing left to prove.
