II Samuel 12:5-7, 9a, 12-13a (NIV) 5 David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, "As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die! 6 He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity." 7 Then Nathan said to David, "You are the man! This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. 9a Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own… 12 You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel.' " 13a Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." Nathan replied, "The LORD has taken away your sin.
Matthew 16:26 (NIV) What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?
King David did not want “the whole world.” He only wanted one woman, Bathsheba. Unfortunately, she was married to another man. But never mind, where there is a desire, there is a way, and David found it. He’d let Uriah make a valiant sacrifice for the army, then comfort the grieving widow. Sure, it bothered David at first – the lies, the trickery, the hypocrisy, the treachery, and the fear of being found out. But all of that was behind him now and Bathsheba was his wife. Then the Lord sent Nathan to David. David condemns himself and finds that in his headlong desire for Bathsheba he had lost his sense of compassion, his sense of mercy and pity for underserved affliction he caused to come upon someone.
Compassion is a saving attribute of God, and describes the caring of Jesus for people. Compassion is to hurt with someone else’s pain. When we lose the ability to hurt with the hurting of others we invariably cause harm, becoming tuned out to the needs of wife, husband, children, friends, parents. We simply do not see the needs in others we care about, and we do not see the hurt, whether caused by ourselves or by vagrancies of life. We also become turned off to what is happening inside us, handing over our soul to deceit and compromise.
When compassion is lost, God in compassion sends a Nathan to crack the concrete that has grown slowly but surely over our heart. How many of us have had a Nathan come into our life? How many of us welcome him or her with regular visits? Do we recognize these agents of God’s goodness and saving grace to us? Jesus not only forgives sin but raises awareness of sins that we have successfully anesthetized in our soul. Repentance is the honest recognition of the wrong we have done. It is the cracking of the concrete, the recovery of the hurt we have caused others and the harm we have brought on ourselves. It may not be a very pleasant experience. Surgery of this sort seldom is. But it is necessary if we are to remain sensitive to God and compassionate toward one another. And, most of us are not very good at doing surgery on ourselves. Will the Nathans that God sends find us ready and willing to recognize the wrong we have done?
From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope July 28, 1991
© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell Broyles
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