You are the One!

2 Samuel 12:7 (ESV) Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul.

Nathan, the prophet of God, knows what David had done and he comes to David with a fictional story.

It is the story of a rich man, who had a large flock of sheep. He was very wealthy.  There was also a poor man who had one small female sheep that he loved like a member of his family.

When a stranger visits the rich man, the rich man doesn’t want to give up one of his many sheep to feed his visitor.  So, instead, he steals the only sheep of the poor man. He then kills that sheep and feeds it to the man who was the guest at his home.

When Nathan told King David this story, David was furiously enraged. The king said, “Bring me that man! That man deserves to die! He stole, he coveted, and he killed someone else’s property.”

David didn’t think that man should live.

Nathan, being a prophet of God, a man of integrity, and a man of courage, pointed at the king and said, “King, you are the man!” And David was immediately convicted of his sin. He knew that he was that rich landowner in that story and that Uriah the Hittite was like the poor man—all he had was his wife. He understood that that poor man was Uriah, whom he had killed and stole his wife.

God looks at many today and says the same thing: “Young man. Young woman. You are the man! You are the woman!”

How many times have we said, that, “Man, wow! You know what, these rich CEO criminals who steal left and right from people, man, they should be punished!” They should be thrown in jail, right, while we download music that doesn’t belong to us and we steal people’s creative and intellectual property on the Internet?

It is so easy for us to look at the sin of others and say, “That person deserves to be judged. That person deserves to be punished.”

But God looks at each of us and says, “You are the man! You are the woman!” Because all sin is wicked in God’s eyes, God will judge all sin. Not only the sins we don’t like in others, but the sin we feel comfortable doing in our own lives.

Yes, my friend, you are the man or you are the woman! I am the man, too!

God is opposed to the proud but He gives grace to the humble (James 4:6). David, the greatest king on the planet at the time, realized that he had sinned and done what is evil in God’s sight and he humbled himself before God. He didn’t try to justify it, he didn’t try to come up with excuses for it, and he didn’t say to God, “LORD, look at all these good things I’ve done; surely that outweighs my sin.”

God will not despise a heart that is broken and contrite before Him. God will not turn His back on the person who humbles himself before God, and pleads to Him for mercy.

But you must come to God on His terms—only through the Gospel of His Son (1 Cor. 15:1-9).