Septuagesima – Pr. Anderson sermon
2 Samuel 12:1-10 “You Are the Man”
February 1, 2026 | Christ Lutheran Church
In Nomine Iesu
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Heavenly Father, we come before you in thanksgiving, that you have kept us in knowledge of you. We repent as there are times in our lives we can get caught up in our sin and we let it eat on us without asking for repentance. We pray that strengthen us when we are weak and that when we fail, we remember to come to you in penitent hearts. Help us to remember that your forgiveness is there for us because your one and only son bore all of our sins with him on the cross, casting them away forever. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. (Rom. 1:7, etc.)
The sermon text for today is taken from the 2nd book of the Prophet Samuel. We read selected verses in Jesus’ name:
So the LORD sent Nathan to David. He came and told him this: There were two men in a city. One was rich and one poor. The rich man had a large number of flocks and herds. The poor man did not own anything except one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. He raised it so that it grew up together with him and his children. It ate from his food and drank from his cup. It slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him. When a traveler came to the rich man, the rich man was unwilling to take an animal from his flock or from his herd to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. So he took the lamb from the poor man and prepared it for the man who had come to him. David’s anger flared up against that man. He said to Nathan, “As the LORD lives, the man who has done this is as good as dead. In place of that lamb, he will restore four lambs, because he did this and had no pity.” Nathan told David, “You are the man. This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says.” I anointed you king over Israel. I rescued you from the hand of Saul. I gave the house of your master to you, and I gave the wives of your master into your embrace. I gave you the house of Israel and the house of Judah. If this was too little, I would have added even more. Why have you despised the word of the LORD by doing evil in his eyes? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword. You have taken his wife as your own wife. You have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. So now the sword will not depart from your house forever, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.
These are Your words, heavenly Father. Sanctify us by Your truth, Your Word is truth. Amen. (Joh. 17:17)
In Christ Jesus, who reveals to us His undeserved grace, grace that governs us all our days until we see Him in glory, dear fellow redeemed:
My wife’s family has a dog. Her name is Ivy. She is a smaller breed from the Russel family. Ivy is loved very much. Being a small dog, she loves to curl up on your lap. She very much enjoys people food way more than her own. Her bark is also way more ferocious than the nonexistent bite that she has when anyone drives up the driveway. I would have to say that Ivy is definitely a member of the family. I would say that happens with everyone and their pets. We love them and treat them differently compared to a wild animal. In our text we hear about this pet lamb. It has the qualities of any pet that we could have. Take out the part of David, how do you feel when you hear this parable? Imagine you have that pet lamb. You cared for it and loved it and treated it as your own. Imagine your rich neighbor taking it, slaughtering it, and serving it to his guests! You would be upset right? Why would anyone do such a thing! Now realize the truth, you are that rotten rich guy! Nathan says the exact same thing to us when it comes to our sins. “You are the Man.”
This big long parable from Nathan has to have a reason. Looking at David’s life we see why this is. David was loved by God. We see that in his life. David could have gotten whatever he needed from God. God delivered him from his enemies and gave him an entire kingdom. Yet David grew lazy in his deeds. The time came for kings to go off for war. David sent out the army and stayed home. From his roof he saw the beautiful Bathsheba. He took her to his bed. She then came to him later, she was pregnant. David had to cover his tracks. So, he asked for her husband to come home. Uriah came home yet had more honor than David. David tried twice to get him to spent time with Bathsheba yet his servant Uriah couldn’t do such a thing with his brothers at war. So, David made him carry his own execution letter. David continued to hide his sin by putting him at the front of his battle lines to make sure he was killed.
We know the time table to when Nathan showed up. We can read earlier and see that the baby had been born. David had done what was evil in the eyes of the Lord. His continual running lead him into the state of unbelief. It doesn’t say that he addressed God at all during those 9 months. David confessed in Psalm 32, When I kept silent, my bones wasted away as I groaned all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me. My moisture was dried up by the droughts of summer. This isn’t David in repentance. David had fallen into unbelief. He no longer went to his God. He couldn’t go back to his God. He had lost his faith. For this reason, God sent Nathan to David to call him to repent. When he called David back, it was then as we read in Psalm 51 that David confessed, For I admit my rebellious acts. My sin is always in front of me. Against you, you only, have I sinned, and I have done this evil in your eyes. So you are justified when you sentence me.
We see in our text how Nathan crafted his call to repentance. He was very careful. He plays on David’s heart strings. We hear it when David wants this man punished. We know where his anger comes from. David at one point was a protector of sheep. 1 Samuel 17, David said to Saul, “Your servant has been taking care of his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and took a lamb from the flock, I went after it and struck it and rescued the lamb out of its mouth. But David had not taken care of his sheep, he murdered Uriah the Hittite. And in his rage to get this rich man, to make him pay for what he did, Nathan then delivers the blow, “You are the Man!”
That is what God says to us. You are the man. Here is what our text is getting at today. We live in a world that does not want to acknowledge sin, because all sin condemns us. We too fit into that category like David. We want to bury the things that we do. We want to hide them where no one can see the. We don’t want to acknowledge them all. If we are confronted we want to tell everyone off. How dare they! They don’t know anything. This repressing is dangerous. We do that and we will end up just like David. This is the danger of forsaking repentance. We can get to the point that we can’t turn back. David had fallen away from faith. The longer we refuse to repent of our sins, the more likely we will fall from faith. David couldn’t ask God for help anymore. Our hearts can be hardened just like his.
Scripture does give us records of others that refused to repent and turned away from God. Pharaoh of Egypt hardened his heart. King Saul hardened his. His own disciple, Judas Iscariot hardened his. This is not something that only happened to the “bad guys” of the Bible. God went to all of them before it got to that point. He warned them. He called them back. Yet they refused. This is our wake-up call. Put off repentance later and there might not be a Nathan anymore to wake us up later.
It is hard to hear this. It is hard to hear that unrepentant sin as ultimately faith destroying. We don’t want to hear it because we are sinful. The world wants us to believe that we get a lot of chances to repent. It wants us to think we are saved regardless if we repent or not. The prophet Nathan tells us this is not the case. For where there is no repentance, there can be no faith. We do deserve to be condemned. This is so, so serious. It’s not a joking matter. If Nathan doesn’t go to David, if he doesn’t condemn him with God’s holy law and show him what he did wrong, and if David fails to repent, David stays in unbelief. He stays in unbelief until his final breathe. It was by the Grace of God that he sent Nathan. It is that grace that God comes back to us when we fail. No man can convert himself.
The lamb in Nathan’s parable was used for a purpose. That poor innocent lamb was used to expose the sins of King David. That lamb exposed our too sin. But also, God used another lamb. John cried out from the river bank, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” This lamb of God, Jesus Christ, atoned for the sins that the first one exposed. This lamb was also innocent. It lived a perfect life, not doing anything wrong. Not committing sin to hide from God. Instead that innocent lamb, took all of our sins, the ones that we have tried to hide. He took every single one, put it on his back, and was slaughtered. On Calvary the world received absolution for all of the sins that have been committed. Christ bore all of the sins of the world on his shoulders for us. He took them all to the grave and left them there, to be viewed no more.
David after hearing what he had done, after being called back from the depths, he repented of his sin. Nathan restored him in an instant. There was no catch with his forgiveness. There were however consequences because of his sins. God doesn’t say that because we repent there aren’t consequences for sin. Our sins can have consequences tied to them. There was nothing David could do for himself, he couldn’t even come back on his own. All he could do was recognize his guilt and need for the Savior once the prophet had revealed it to him. That same thing goes for us. We can’t work ourselves out of the hole. All we can do is recognize are guilt and need for the Savior. as Christ takes on the full weight that we deserved.
Just as Nathan crafted a parable to proclaim law and Gospel, a message of absolution for David, so too pastors do the same for us. It can be hard for anyone to hear that they did something wrong, especially to be told by another sinful being. Yet pastors are a called servant, there for you. This isn’t a message that is worth throwing away. A pastor’s job is to be in the stead of Christ. They are there to help you in your lowest points. When they speak absolution, they are announcing the Words of Christ. That is Christ speaking through them to you. Sure, they don’t have recognized powers, but as stewards of the mysteries of Christ, they are authorized to give Christ’s forgiveness to you. On our own we are lost. Lost sinners without a way to save ourselves. Yet God had compassion on us. We are given Christ grace as we could never merit or channel it in our lost condition.
Therefore, we can give thanks that the Lord has once again pulled us from the brink. He shows us and gives us the knowledge of the things that we have done wrong. He calls us to repent. He calls back into God’s light. This is all God’s doing. His work to save us.
As Christians we can also be like Nathan to others. Don’t leave those you care about behind if you see them fail. You can be there like Nathan. You can call them back. Turning them toward repentance. How wonderful is it when someone repents! We see this in the New Testament over and over! Jesus tells us the parables of the lost coin, going after that lost lamb, the return of the prodigal son. These parables along with the Jesus saying in St. Luke, “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” show us how awesome this is! Remember to give the glory to God when they do repent. As it is God’s grace that comes to them to turn them from their ways. All of this he does by grace without merit or worth from me.
It is hard to think that a story about a pet lamb can lead to such an outcome. How great it is to know that we have a God who is compassionate, who is slow to anger when it comes to our sins? God has not abandoned us. He does not want to leave us behind condemned to the world. As much as our sins can bear us down, we can be thankful that Christ bore them all. Even when we fail again and again, Christ is always there. He has pulled the sin off of us and put it on his shoulders. He took them all to the grave and left them there. Our great Shepherd who searches for the one sheep to bring them back to the flock. Christ is our deliverer. Thanks be to God that we are saved by Christ alone! Amen.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
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