2 Samuel 12:1-23 Learning from Failure

Have you ever played hide and seek? It has different names in different places. In England, it is known as Tin Can Alley. The Germans call it “Verstecken Spielen.”
The object of the game is to hide from a person – named “It” who is trying to find you. The last person who is still hidden becomes the new “It”. You probably played this game as a child. It was great fun trying to find places where the “It” could not find you. You could really use your imagination to seek out better places to hide. Finding the best place – where no one could get to you – was the best strategy.
This is what has happened with David. He has committed the sins of sleeping with Bathsheba. He tried to play hide and seek from other people. He had Uriah killed, and then he took Bathsheba as his wife. But of course, he couldn’t hide forever. Nine months later, the child comes and literally all hell breaks loose.
David was in the classic situation of trying to cover-up what he did wrong. He failed God miserably (2Sam 11:27). But God is not going to let David go on this sin. God has to teach David a lesson.
So David tries to play hide and seek. He stops talking to God. We know this because God sends Nathan to confront David. Only after Nathan confronts David, do we see David learning.
Have you had the same experience? Have you failed God miserably – to the point where you want to hide from Him? God does not want you to hide from Him. He wants to help you deal with your failure.

What was the failure: David dishonored God. It had its effect in other relationships, but his failure was against God (2 Sam 12:12).

HOW DID DAVID FAIL GOD?

He did not listen to His commandments

God had given clear commandments to David. These were the moral expectations that God had for every person who followed Him. David broke a few of those: he was covetous – he looked at someone who was not his. He was murderous – he killed someone to get what he wanted. He was adulterous – he enjoyed sex with a woman that was not his.

He hurt God’s reputation

But more important, David hurt God’s reputation. Because David acted in the way he did, he made God look like He was not truthful. It gave the enemies of God a chance to say something bad about God. In the past, David did not tolerate this. When Goliath insulted God, David was the first to attack. However, now David is the reason that people can insult God.
So when you sin, when you do not follow God’s commands, you give people reason to attach and insult God. Do you really want to do that? I don’t.

No doubt that this hurt David, but it hurt God more. So what does David do? He tries to leave God alone. He tries to play hide and seek. This is the reason that God sent Nathan. David had stopped listening to God. He stopped praying. He stopped building his relationship with God because David feared what would happen. For nine months David refused to repent. For nine months David hid his act from God. David tried to hide it from other people too. He hid his sin from Uriah by killing Uriah. He hid his sin from Joab the commander of the army by giving him a classic military excuse. He hid his sin from perhaps other people by being alone. I would have no doubt that David’s closest friends were wondering – what is going on with him. He is acting very different.
So Nathan steps in for a cup of coffee one day and gives David a message. He tells David the story of a rich man and a poor man. It is interesting that this parable is used. Here are some facts to be aware:
David was the king of Israel. He was the Hebrew of Hebrews. He had a set of officers and a special guard. They were called the “Mighty Men.” These were men that had built a friendship with David since his time fighting the Philistines in Hebron. For over a decade, David spends his days and nights with them. One of them is Uriah the Hittite (2 Samuel 23:29). We hear this name but realize something. Uriah was a foreigner working in David’s army. Uriah would be like a foreigner from another nation working for the government of Germany. Nathan implies that Uriah was poor. But Uriah had his wife. She was the most precious person in Uriah’s life. Uriah did not have anything else. The only thing he could call his own was his wife. David was the rich man. David steals the only thing this poor man had. The poor man – Uriah had honor. The rich man – David had no such honor.
Here is another fact. Bathsheba’s grandfather was Ahithophel, the Gilonite. So Bathsheba’s father comes from a foreign country. Read a couple of chapters later and you find that Ahithophel gives Absolom some advice. Ahithophel tells Absolom – go and sleep with one of David’s concubines. Ahithophel is using Absolom to punish David. This is also what God said would happen (2 Samuel 12:11-12). You play hide and seek with me, David and I will show the world your sin in public. You slept with a woman in private, but I will let someone sleep with your concubine in public. You disrupted someone else’s family and so I will now allow disruption, pain, and war happen in your own family. Of course, the tragic irony is that Bathsheba’s grandfather told Absolom to sleep with David’s concubine in public (2 Samuel 16:20-23). It is as if God is going to get David’s attention. He is going to go to the wound. In David’s case, God puts salt on the wound.
Nathan tells the parable and points the truth at David. David immediately confesses. He says that he has sinned against God. But apparently, confession is not enough for God. God wants a change in David’s heart. God wants David to come back to Himself. How does God do it? God strikes the child with an illness.
Is it the fault of the child that it is ill? No. Is God punishing the child? No. Look what happens next. David bends his knees in prayer. God has finally gotten David’s attention. God has played the role of “It” and has found someone who is hidden.
When you play hide and seek with God, He is going to get your attention – one way or the other.
You play hide and seek with God, He is going to draw you out. He can do it in positive ways:

ILLUSTRATION: Duke and the steak to get out from under the house.
When I was in Texas, I had a dog. His name was Duke. He lived in the house with me. He was a rat-terrier – more a rat than a terrier. Because of the design of the house, he could get under the house from time to time. I had this doggy-door which was a small door for dogs to leave the house when they wanted. Duke would just go outside when he wanted and come back in. It was convenient for him and me.
How

ever, from time to time, there would be other animals that would come under the house. Many times it was a rat, or a squirrel or a snake. So Duke would try to “rat” them out – or bark at them so that they would leave. But they would not leave. And so sometimes I was stuck with a dog under a house barking all day at an animal that would not leave. This was driving me crazy. It was also driving some of my neighbors crazy. So I tried to go under and drag him out. But that did not work. I tried to call to him, but that did not work. So someone suggested that I put a piece of raw steak on the front porch and wait for him to come. Sure enough 15 minutes after I put the steak by the door, here comes Duke, ready for his prize.
God does that sometimes to get us out from hiding. He puts the steak there so that we can smell something that is better than what we are dealing with at the moment. But sometimes God uses a painful method to get us out from hiding.
God can use a painful way. David is going to go through the pain of the death of a child. God is saying this: You will lose your child. This is the child that should have been Uriah’s. Your child, David, your child that you had out of wedlock, I will take from you. This is the child that you basically stole from another person.
God means what he says. Every time you read in the Bible about David and Bathsheba, it always says “the wife of Uriah the Hittite”. God gives us the reminder that sometimes our sin teaches us in a painful way. The consequences of not listening to God and playing hide and seek with Him are very tough.

HOW DO WE LEARN FROM FAILURE

1. Listen to the warnings of God

Just as David had to listen to the warning of God, you too must listen. Of course, David waited too late. We shouldn’t wait a long time in hiding. God wants to get our attention. He wants to help us out of our failure, but we have to listen to Him when He warns us.
God gives us the Holy Spirit as our warning system. The Holy Spirit tells us when we are doing something that is against God and His commands. We have to be led by the Spirit in these cases.

2. Come clean as soon as you can

Nothing messes up your relationship with God more than unconfessed sin. Read Psalm 51 and you will see that confession will make your relationship with God cleaner. God wants to forgive your sin, but you have to come to Him and confess it in prayer.

3. Realize that every time you sin, you hurt God’s reputation

Sometimes we think of the natural consequences of sin and we fear it and so we don’t do that sin. That may be true. But more than just hurting the other person, our sin hurts God. When you don’t act or behave like you say you believe, it hurts God and His reputation. It gives fuel for the fire that Satan uses in darts and arrows against the church family. It gives people the excuse to say that God is not real or true or faithful or good.
You should love God so much that when you sin, you realize that you hurt God. You should love God so much that after you sin, you want to restore your relationship with God. If you are a Christian, this should be so.

4. Learn from the experience. Don’t try to repeat it

There are some experiences that we should not try to repeat. Sin is one of them. Sometimes we go through these experiences. Perhaps we are ignorant, perhaps we were unwise, perhaps we were tempted, perhaps were even told to do it even when we know it was wrong as if we were coerced. No matter how it happened, our sin is not something we want to continue in our lives.
God loves you. Sometimes we fail Him. Yet God wants you to learn from your failure. God’s grace is there to help you learn from your sin –so that God can use you (Titus 2:11-14).

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash