Sermon Tone Analysis

Trusting the Director

2 Samuel 12:15-25

Good morning and welcome to ReCAST Church . . .

Don Filcek the lead pastor here . . .

We have a privilege to gather together in the name of God.

He is forging a community of faith here in our midst.

We think we just showed up to come to church this morning, but if we are not careful, we might find ourselves being swept up into more than a Sunday morning show.

We might find that God is enlisting us to join together as an outpost of heaven in enemy territory.

My goal on Sunday morning goes far beyond giving you a good program.

Our time together is tactical training for life.

This morning, the text of Scripture is going leave us bruised and sore tomorrow.

Like one of the tougher work outs.

We know it’s good for us, but we don’t always love the burn!

So Before we read this text, let me set the stage for our thinking and interaction with a very direct statement.

We can either trust God as the great director of this amazing and grand production of creation . . .

Or we can outright reject the Director and decide that this must just be an undirected play.

There either is a God over this or we are in a world where every actor merely does what they want and nobody is guiding this thing toward a curtain call.

Is anybody captaining this ship!? Or is this world adrift at sea!?

I am starting out the message this way, because our text is going to rub up against one of the most harsh and difficult tragedies we can imagine from our perspective.

A little one will die by the end of our text.

An innocent will be caught in the cross-fire of adult sin . . .

And he will perish for the sin of David.

And in our cultural moment where we are wrestling with so much mental illness that yields the death of so many little ones in Uvalde, TX, I can only imagine that this text comes at a divinely appointed time to address many of our already forming thoughts about death and tragedy.

How many of you have already spent some time in the past few weeks considering tragedy and particularly the death of young ones!?

Our text follows on the heels of David’s terrible sin with Bathsheba and The murder of her husband Uriah.

The prophet Nathan came to David and confronted him with his sin.

David repented, and God issued punishments to him . . .

Violence would be present in his house, an evil attempt to overthrown his kingdom will arise from his own household, and the child born to Bathsheba would die.

It is a gut-wrenching story, that requires us to reflect on reality, God, and ourselves with more than a merely light-hearted rah-rah cheerleading session for your week.

We do not gather each Sunday morning, ReCAST, to give you a little pep for your week.

We come to meet with The Almighty God . . .

And that means sometimes our gathering will be heavy lifting!

So let’s rack up the weights and open our Bibles or Scripture Journals or devices to 2 Samuel 12:15-25.

Read/Pray

Get comfortable and keep your Bibles open to 2 Samuel 12:15-25.

(coffee, juice, donut holes)

This passage is not hard to understand.

You read it, and the narrative is straightforward.

David’s child falls sick.

He seeks the Lord for mercy through prayer and fasting and humility.

The child dies on the seventh day.

When David finds out that the child is dead, he quits mourning, cleans up and eats . . .

And worships God.

David explains the nature of his counter-cultural response to death and mourning.

God grants David and Bathsheba more children, with the highlight being the birth of Solomon who will take the throne after David.

And that is the narrative in a nutshell.

As far as outlining we see three movements:

1. David’s Fast (15-19)

2. David’s Faith (20-23)

3. God’s Faithfulness (24-25)

1. David’s Fast (15-19)

The scenario is set out for us in stark terms that do not allow us to wiggle out from under the cause of this child’s illness.

The Lord afflicted the child with illness!

And he became sick.

The verb is active enough to get under our skin.

Is your God in the business of afflicting children with illness!?

There are two types of people here today, and we are not going to resolve the problem today.

There are people who lean into the mystery, that the Lord afflicted David and Bathsheba’s infant son as the text say, and then there are people who want to run a PR campaign for God.

He would never do something like this, and so after plenty of spin they land right back where we started with sick child, but a God who is marginally better as standing by watching the sick child die without intervention.

And let me cut to the chase and begin to bend our thoughts toward the definition of death, sickness, and the mind-bending mystery of our existence!

N.D. Wilson has written one of my favorite books on this problem of evil, sin, and death in the light of Good and Sovereign God.

And he say s the following long quote in his book, “Notes From the Tilt-a-Whirl”!

“God has the authority to shape a soul with His voice, bind it to matter, and send it into history (to cast it on the stage of his grand drama.)

And He has the authority to sever my soul from my body and call it to another part of the stage.

He has the authority to reuse the matter from my flesh in daffodils.

I’m not worried.

I’ll get more . . .

To His eyes, you never leave the stage.

You do not cease to exist.

It is a chapter ending, an act, not the play itself.

Look to Him.

Walk toward Him.

The cocoon is a death, but not a final death.

The coffin can be a tragedy, but not for long.

There will be butterflies.”

Death is our worst enemy.

But to God it is merely a relocation of an actor to another part of the stage.

We do not cease to ever be out of the sight and scope of God.

For us, death is a substantial change in our existence like a caterpillar entering a cocoon.

From God’s perspective . . .

It is merely a moving from the front of the stage to the back of the stage.

We are no less present to our God in sickness, tragedy, or death.

And further, when we talk about the sickness or death or mass shooting involving children, we see the tragedy through the lens of the loss of so much potential.

But to God, a human is never a potential.

He who sees beginnings, ends, and everything in between at the same time only deals in actualities.

Every breath, every act, every sin, every good deed, every thought, and every birth and death is always ever-present to Him.

His reality is so different from ours, that it is hard to bend our minds to comprehend the way in which God even perceives time.

And one more thing as long as we are laboring under the first of 11 verses!!?? Do not spend too much time trying to figure out why God would assign the death of this child as a just punishment for David’s sin with Bathsheba.

Some have indicated that the punishment fits the crime!?

And I disagree with this connection for two reasons.

The text gives us nothing of the inner mind of God on the matter.

And second, is that I can think of other punishments that fit this crime that would be more uncomfortable and more focused on the guilty party: King David!

But don’t lose sight that David is genuinely broken over his sin.

See Psalm 51 if you missed the message last week to see David’s confession.

And so David went in to his royal chambers, lay on his face on the floor, fasted from food, wept, and sought the Lord.

I call this entire section “David’s Fast” because in this we see him focus all of his desire and attention on the healing of his little infant son! Fasting is not a tool to manipulate God, rather it is a tool to manipulate our own sinful flesh.

We are a bundle of various appetites, passions, and desires.

A fundamental appetite, of course is an appetite for food.

Our physiology reminds us regularly that we need food.

In fasting, we are actively subduing that routine appetite, to focus our hunger and appetite toward God.