I Shall Go To Him (Morning)
Download MP3If you have a bible, I invite you to turn to 2nd Samuel chapter 12. It's also there in your worship guide. I wish I wasn't preaching on this text this Sunday. As coincidence would have it, I will be preaching on the death of a child on child dedication Sunday. But in the Lord's sovereignty, that's where we are.
Joel Brooks:So there's no doubt about it, though. This is a difficult text. It's a it's a hard story to read. It's gonna raise a lot of questions. Questions like, how could a good God do something like this?
Joel Brooks:Or if God truly forgives someone, then why does he still make them suffer? Or questions more personal, like is the suffering and the pain that I'm currently experiencing, is it because God is punishing me for something that I've done? We will certainly look at those questions as we work through this text, but you need to know at the start that I do not have all the answers. It's, fairly easy when you're preaching through the Bible to tell people the the hows and the whats of what God is doing, but the whys the whys can be a little difficult. And so I think we have to approach text like this with a whole lot of humility.
Joel Brooks:I will say this, that David comes out of this a completely transformed man. This is the turning point really in his life. It's what the Hebrew scholar who have quoted before Robert Alter, he he calls it the great pivotal moment in the life of David. Actually, let me read you the the whole quote from him. Said, the great pivotal moment of the whole story of David is when he puts aside his mourning and he says about his dead son, I am going to him.
Joel Brooks:He will not come back to me. These are the very first words that David pronounces that have no conceivable political motive. That give us a glimpse into his inwardness, that reveal his vulnerability. In place of David, the seeker and the wielder of power, we now see a vulnerable David. And this is how he will chiefly appear throughout the last half of his story.
Joel Brooks:End quote. So David becomes a completely new man after losing a child. And I wanna say that although this is a story about suffering, it is also a story with incredible hope for us. For those of you who are experiencing suffering right now, I hope this story is a comfort to you. I believe that's why it is given to us.
Joel Brooks:So let's walk through this. 2nd Samuel chapter 12 beginning in verse 13. David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said to David, the Lord has also put away your sin. You shall not die.
Joel Brooks:Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die. Then Nathan went to his house. And the lord afflicted the child that Uriah's wife bore to David, and he became sick. David therefore sought God on behalf of the child. And David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground.
Joel Brooks:And the elders of his house stood beside him to raise him from the ground, but he would not, nor did he eat food with them. On the 7th day, the child died. And the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead. For they said, behold, while the child was yet alive, we spoke to him and he did not listen to us. How then can we say to him that his child is dead?
Joel Brooks:He may do himself some harm. But when David saw that his servants were whispering together, David understood that the child was dead. And David said to his servants, is the child dead? They said, he is dead. Then David arose from the earth and washed and anointed himself and changed his clothes.
Joel Brooks:And he went into the house of the Lord and he worshiped. He then went to his own house and when they asked when he asked, they set food before him and he ate. Then his servant said to him, what is this thing that you have done? You fasted and wept for the child while he was alive, but when the child died, you arose and you ate food. He said, while the child was still alive, I fasted and wept.
Joel Brooks:For I said, who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me that the child may live? But now he is dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.
Joel Brooks:Then David comforted his wife, Bathsheba, and went into her and lay with her. And she bore a son, and he called his name Solomon. And the Lord loved him and sent a message by Nathan the prophet, so he called his name Jedidiah because of the Lord. This is the word of the Lord. Yes, amen.
Joel Brooks:Will you pray with me? Father, I pray that you would open up our hearts and minds, that we might, hear your heart in this text. We might receive what you would have for us. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, may your words remain and may they change us.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. So I'm not sure if any of you have ever received terrible heartbreaking life changing news before. But when you do it, it's an absolute punch in the gut. All your air just seems to leave.
Joel Brooks:You you struggle to breathe. You're disoriented. You either need to sit down, or you're going to fall down because your strength has just left you. When I was in college and I got the phone call about my dad, I kept thinking, I'm not hearing this correctly. The person must be misinformed.
Joel Brooks:There's gotta be a bad connection. I had a really hard time processing the news. I felt like I had been kicked in the gut and I couldn't breathe. David here, when he hears news that his child is sick, he he goes to the floor. In verse 16, we read that David fasted and he lay all night on the ground.
Joel Brooks:Now this is both a posture of prayer, but also just a posture of 1 in tremendous grief. One cannot eat or stand when suffering like this hits. I once heard a pastor call this on the floor suffering. This is that on the floor type of suffering. And if you haven't experienced on the floor suffering yet in this life, it's only because you're young.
Joel Brooks:You will experience it at some point. At some point, someone you love dearly is going to die. And it's gonna feel like a kick in the gut. You you've never felt pain like that before. There'll be other forms of pain as well if you live long enough.
Joel Brooks:The only way to avoid suffering is to die young. But if you live long enough, besides losing some people dear to you that you know and love, perhaps you might have a child go astray. You might have a spouse do the unimaginable. You might have a business collapse. You might have your health deteriorate or you might have an accident that leaves you forever scarred.
Joel Brooks:Because we live in this broken world, suffering is absolutely unavoidable. So like David, one day on the floor suffering is gonna hit you in the gut. David spent 7 whole days on the floor before that child, his child finally died. And when the child dies, everyone's scared to tell David. I mean, we've already seen before in the life of David.
Joel Brooks:He doesn't take bad news well. He shoots the messenger. But they're not worried about their safety this time. They're worried about his. I mean, if he was if he was like that when the child was alive, how is he gonna handle this news?
Joel Brooks:He might harm himself. But David's child is dead. That truth is unavoidable. Six times in this text, it says, he's dead. He's dead.
Joel Brooks:He's dead. It's like, no matter where you turn, you can't escape the truth. The child's dead. Someone's gotta tell David. But actually, he hears them all whispering and so he guesses it.
Joel Brooks:He says, is my child dead? And actually in Hebrew, they just give a one word response back. He says, is my child dead? And they go, dead. Dead.
Joel Brooks:And David goes to the He arises at this point. He washes, showers, puts on deodorant, new clothes. He eats. He goes and he worships. People are like, what?
Joel Brooks:What what just happened? David never ceases to surprise us, does he? I mean, you read through a story and every time you think you have them figured out, he's like, where did that how? How do you do this? This is utterly surprising here.
Joel Brooks:How can David get up upon hearing the news that his child is dead? How can you just get up off the floor and move on with life? And what can we learn from Him in order that we could do the same so that when on the floor suffering hits us, we're able to keep moving on in life? Because not everyone does. Time does not always heal every wound.
Joel Brooks:We all know people who have who've been hit with grief and they've never pulled out of it. They're actually a shell of the former person that they were. You can mark their lives from from who they were before this tragedy and versus who they are afterwards. And they're never the same. Just a just a shell of the person.
Joel Brooks:Time doesn't always heal. How is it that David can get up and move on with his life? What can we learn from him? Well, I think David understands 3 things that helps him get up off the floor. And I want us to look at these 3 things.
Joel Brooks:First is this, he knew where to go with his pain. When David heard his child was sick, he instantly went to the Lord in prayer, Even though there was very little hope that God would save his child. He still went to the Lord in prayer. Actually, if you read through his Psalms that David wrote, so many of them are just prayers of despair, prayers of suffering. Psalm 39 is, the Psalm I I instantly thought of in this story.
Joel Brooks:He very well might have written this Psalm, while this was happening. We read this. And now, oh lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you. Remove your stroke from me.
Joel Brooks:I'm spent by the hostility of your hand. When you discipline a man with rebukes for sin, you consume them like a moth that is dear to him. Surely, all mankind is a mere breath. The Psalm ends this with this, look away from me that I may smile again. That's how the Psalm ends.
Joel Brooks:The one who was praying earlier, cast me now away from your presence is now praying, God, don't even look at me so I can enjoy my last moments in peace. What a I mean, this is in the bible. That honesty and and prayers. I love this because what David is modeling for us is even though he was in that much despair, even though he had that much anger towards God, he went to God. God can handle your anger.
Joel Brooks:God can handle your grief. Go to him in prayer. And you know what? God understands because God the father got to watch his child suffer and die. He knows what it's like.
Joel Brooks:We don't go to him as some distant God who's unattached from us, but we go to him as a God who knows our suffering, knows our pain, and he can take our anger. And so go to him. Go to him in the midst of your grief. Second thing that David understood, not just that who to go to with his pain, but he understood that there was a purpose behind his pain. And you might be thinking, well, yeah.
Joel Brooks:I mean, of course, there's a purpose. It's punishment. Punishment for David's horrible sin. But actually, I think we need to be really careful there. I think we need to be really careful before jumping to that conclusion that David killed this child as a punishment for David's sin.
Joel Brooks:Look at verse 13. After David confesses his sin, Nathan says to him, the Lord the Lord has put away your sin. Now to put away sin means that you no longer holding that sin against the person. You have forgiven the person of that sin. To put it away means it's no longer in front of you.
Joel Brooks:You don't see the sin anymore. In other words, David's sin has been completely dealt with. It's been forgiven. There's no sin left for David to pay for. God emphasizes this point by after saying yours your sins have been put away.
Joel Brooks:He then says, nevertheless. He doesn't say, therefore, your child's gonna die. He says, nevertheless, which means, although your sins have been put away, nevertheless, pain is about to come into your life. Are you tracking with me? Are you following with me in this?
Joel Brooks:God tells David, I've put away your sin. But even though your sin has been removed, you are still gonna experience pain. God's gonna bring pain into David's life Because when he committed that sin, he revealed something about what was going on in his heart. That he was he utterly scorned the Lord. You might have other translations, instead of saying utterly scorned, the the n I v says, shown utter contempt.
Joel Brooks:The Hebrew word there that's used means, you made light the Lord. You made light. It's the opposite of the word glory which means heavy. David made light of God. In other words, he acted in such a way that God had no real substance in his life.
Joel Brooks:God had no weight in his life or glory. God was just all talk at this point. I mean, David was still using the language about God. He was still talking about God, but that's all it was was just talk. God wasn't a a reality in his life anymore.
Joel Brooks:And his actions prove this. I mean, the adultery and the murder and the lying, none of those things happen in a vacuum for years now. After David was installed on the throne for years now, David had been drifting away from God, once again using all the language about God, but it had no weight in his actions, no weight in his life. And so God brings pain into David's life. Not as punishment, but as surgery.
Joel Brooks:It's gonna hurt, but it's a surgery to change his life. So I've had 8 shoulder surgeries. Hopefully, that's the end, but I know it's not. But after one of the surgeries, my doctor, he said, this one's gonna hurt. Which, yeah, you're like, great.
Joel Brooks:But because of where they had to put all the screws and stuff, they're like, this one's gonna hurt. And I just wanna go ahead and warn you that despite the heavy pain meds you're on, and even the like the pain pump you've got and all that stuff, you're gonna wake up tonight and you're gonna think something has horribly gone wrong gone wrong, and you're gonna be tempted to call me up and tell me something's gone wrong. I want you to know that's just how painful it's going to be. And I kind of smirked. I was like, I mean, come on.
Joel Brooks:Maybe it was a pain meds already taken, you know, effect. But I was like, I can deal with pain. That's kinda what I do. You know, I could I could deal with pain. Well, can I tell you, 2 in the morning, I called him up?
Joel Brooks:And I said, something is horribly gone wrong. I like the exact thing he said I was gonna say. Something's hor like, you left a tool in there, like, something is horribly wrong. Surgery can be painful. But by far, the most painful surgery is soul surgery.
Joel Brooks:Soul surgery is the most painful, but God has to perform it at times in order to save our hearts. For some of you right now who are in the midst of terrible suffering, perhaps you are wondering, you're wondering if the reason for your miscarriage, if the reason for your cancer, if the reason you lost your job, or for whatever terrible thing that's happened, the reason for those things is because God is punishing you, Would you please hear me clearly say that is not the reason? That is not the reason you are suffering. For starters, that's not how punishments work. The whole point of a punishment is to make sure the person knows exactly what they did wrong and then you tell them beforehand, because you did that thing wrong, I'm gonna bring pain into your life.
Joel Brooks:That's how I punished all my children. I I I'm one of those, you know, the evil dads who spanks. Okay? I I spank my children. I don't anymore, but when they were younger but never when that happened did they go, like, why am I experiencing this pain?
Joel Brooks:Is it perhaps from something bad I've done? No. I would sit them down beforehand, and I'd say, because you disobeyed me. Or because you disobeyed your mom, I am now gonna have to bring pain into your life. You either have to go to your room or I'm gonna spank you, but it was crystal clear.
Joel Brooks:There is no guesswork. There is But God doesn't punish his children. God does not punish because someone else has already paid for your sins. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. You do not have to pay for your sins, because Jesus has already paid for your sins for you.
Joel Brooks:The Lord has put away your sins. The language I series, put away your sins. And do you know where he put them? On Christ. That's where your sins have been put away.
Joel Brooks:They've been put on Christ. Or the language of Isaiah 53, the Lord has laid on him the inequity of us all. So when Nathan told David that the Lord has put away your sin, he put it on Christ. So whatever pain you have in your life, it's not because God's making you pay for sin. Jesus paid it all.
Joel Brooks:So he's not bringing suffering into our life to punish us, but to teach us something. To teach us to depend on him. To teach us to have his character. I wish there were other ways we could learn those things outside of suffering. But we learned that even Jesus learned obedience through the things that he suffered.
Joel Brooks:The final thing that David understood that helped him get through his suffering was this, He knew where his child now was, and David believed in the resurrection. Verse 22. While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept, for I said, who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me, that the child may live? But now he is dead. Why should I fast?
Joel Brooks:Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me. Now, the people in the old testament, God's saints in the old testament, did not fully understand what happened to someone after death, at least not as fully as we understand it now as New Testament believers. And so some people, when they read this, and they hear David say, I will go to him. They think that David is just talking moment in David's life.
Joel Brooks:But I don't believe this is the case. Yes. David 100% knows that he is gonna die as well. That just as we read on the 7th day, David's son died. David knows that there is a number beside him.
Joel Brooks:That on the whatever day, he doesn't know what it is, but God knows when it is. There is a day that is fixed, and on that day, he will die. I think he he 100% knows that. But I believe that the Lord has given David unique insight into the resurrection. David's actually already written about this in one of our favorite Psalms as a church.
Joel Brooks:We quote Psalm 16. I can't tell you how many times. We've done it the last 2 weeks. You have made known to me the path of life, and your presence is fullness of joy and your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Amazing Psalm.
Joel Brooks:Do you know the the verse right before that? That's verse 11. Verse 10 is this, you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption. You wanna know how David knows the path of life and that in God's presence is fullness of joy? It's because God has told him, your soul will not be abandoned to Sheol.
Joel Brooks:David knew that no matter what happened in his life, the grave would not have the last word, and so he could rejoice. And so while David's child was alive, David is pleading with the Lord. He's saying, would you be gracious enough to where I can enjoy my child in this life? But if not, you have assured me that I will enjoy him in the next. His his child cannot come back to him, but he will most certainly see his child in the next life.
Joel Brooks:This is the hope that all of us have in Christ. I couldn't imagine going through the pain of losing a child and not having that hope. You don't have that hope, you stay on the floor. But the hope of the resurrection gives David the hope, the strength to get up, shower, put on new clothes, eat, worship, and go on with his life. When our missions pastor, Dwight Castle, I asked him if I could share this, by the way.
Joel Brooks:When Dwight and Stephanie found out they were having conjoined twins, that was a serious punch in the gut for them. And Dwight shared about this. He he shared how he he came over to my house, after receiving that news to just together, we could process and pray through those things. And one of the things that I told Dwight was this. I said, I I do not know whether you will be able to enjoy those twins in this life.
Joel Brooks:Because we knew that the odds the odds are, conjoined twins don't make it, which by the way, they'll be celebrating their 2 year birthday, April 22nd. But most twins don't make it. And even if they make it, it's gonna be a long hard road, and you can ask Dwight and Stephanie. It's been a long long long hard road full of suffering. But in that moment, we didn't know what's gonna happen.
Joel Brooks:I said, I don't know what's gonna happen if you'll be able to enjoy these twins in this life or not, but I know you'll be able to enjoy them in the next. And God is gonna use all of this pain, all of this suffering to do something remarkable, Dwight, to bring 2 eternal souls into existence. And 10000 years from now, you will still be enjoying them. And you'll be looking back at this moment and it'll be hard to remember the pain. Or as Paul would later say, it's a light momentary affliction preparing us for an eternal weight of glory.
Joel Brooks:The hope of the resurrection is the only thing that allows us to endure and to to get through these times. Now I could end my sermon here, but lucky you I'm not going to. I do have one more point. It's this. I want you to see how this chapter ends.
Joel Brooks:Chapter 11 and 12 are just so full of sin, suffering, broken world, but you need to see how God redeems it all. It's remarkable. He redeems it all. He uses it and he redeems it. Verse 24.
Joel Brooks:You're it's I'm just you're gonna have a hard time believing these words. Then David comforted his wife, Bathsheba. And he went into her and lay with her, and she bore a son. And he called his name Solomon, and the Lord loved him and sent a message by Nathan the prophet. So he called him Jedidiah because of the Lord.
Joel Brooks:Did you hear those words? David comforted Bathsheba. And once again, the these stories never cease to surprise me. This is the biggest surprise of all. Bathsheba is comforted by the one who took her and murdered her husband.
Joel Brooks:I mean, just let that sink in for a moment. She is comforted by the one who took her and murdered her husband. Repentance and through his suffering. David has come outside the other side of that as a humbled, vulnerable, gentle man, And he will be so till the end. David and Bathsheba are actually gonna have a a good marital relationship from this point forward.
Joel Brooks:It's astounding. You would have never thought that's possible. It just shows the redemptive power of the gospel. I can't tell you how many times I've you know, I'm usually like the last resort at times for married couples who are right at the verge of divorce, and I'll meet with them. And they'll be like, yeah, I know that the gospel can change people.
Joel Brooks:Yes. I know that Jesus can make all things new, all this, but not this marriage. Look what he does in this marriage. The gospel the gospel can do that here. The gospel can transform any messy sinful situation you find yourself in.
Joel Brooks:It's astounding. And then we see how God actually blesses their marriage by giving them another son whom he loves. David and Mesheba, they named this child Solomon, which means at peace. Let that sink in for a moment. After everything that's happened, they have a child and they're like, and we are at peace.
Joel Brooks:God's like, that's not a good enough name. So we're also gonna name this child Jedidiah, which means beloved by me. So they have a child named Peace and Love. And both Bathsheba and Solomon are gonna be in the genealogy of Jesus. This is the line of our savior.
Joel Brooks:Isn't that remarkable? God decides to save the world through all of this mess. Through all of the sin, all of that mess, he actually uses it to bring salvation to this world. God is working through your sin, your mess, your suffering as well. He's doing these things to bring in peace, to bring in love into your life, if you would believe it.
Joel Brooks:Let's pray to him. Jesus, sometimes the suffering that we experience is so painful. It's hard to believe. It's hard to believe that you could bring out something beautiful from it all. You bring salvation through it all.
Joel Brooks:You could bring your love and your peace through it all. So would you help our unbelief? Jesus, thank you for saving us and we thank you for the hope of the resurrection. We pray this in the strong name of Christ. Amen.
