International Sunday School Lesson - Sunday School in 7minutes
SUNDAY SCHOOL IN 7MINUTES
NATHAN CONDEMNS DAVID
2 Samuel 12
ISSL 2.6.2022
MSSL 2.13.2022

David, the shepherd boy who killed Goliath has grown into the 2nd king of Israel. David believed that he had earned God’s favor and was blessed with military victory, wealth, and power.

Nathan was a “Prophet” in David’s court. His role was to interpret signs and tell the King what God wanted for the future.

David committed adultery with Bathsheba. To hide the adultery, he ordered her husband sent to the frontlines of the battlefield so he would be and was killed.

Kings derive their power by divine right, so David is not subject to earthly impeached, but he is subject to God. God used Nathan to rebuked David about his affair and subsequent murder.

Note:
1. Nathan knew that his obedience might cost him a powerful friend and possibly even his life.

2. Nathan is sent to David by God. He is prepared. He knows what David has done.

3. Nathan has a strong trusting relationship with David. As Christian Leader we must develop a relationship of trust with other gaining us the ability to speak truth whenever difficulties arise.

4. Nathan comes to David with a simple story easy to discern the wrong. Nathan's story is a “sheep story,” one that a shepherd, can easily grasp and empathize with, after all David was a shepherd his younger days. The story tells of a rich farmer that takes the 1 well care for pet sheep of a poor farmer. The rich man kills the sheep to feed a friend with no compassion about all the harm caused.

David identifies two evils that have been committed by this fictional rich man.

First, the man has stolen a lamb, for which the law prescribed a fourfold restitution (Exodus 22:1).

Second, David recognizes the rich man's lack of compassion. David is furious because a rich man stole and slaughtered a poor man's pet. He does not yet see the connection to his lack of compassion for stealing from Uriah, poor man, his beloved wife, Bathsheba. Then slaughtering Uriah, the husband, without compassion.

David's display of righteous indignation saying “as the Lord lives” this man should die. Nathan then dramatically indicts that David is the culprit: “You are the man!” In stunned silence, David now listens to the charges against him. Initially, David thinks only in terms of crime and socially unacceptable behavior, not in terms of sin. In verses 7-12, Nathan draws David's attention to his sin against God and the consequences God has pronounced for his sin.
Once we rise to positions of prominence, we sometimes lose sight of the help of God and the people God has place along the way. Nathan remines David and MC to not get power inflated egos. It was God that
o anointed you king
o . . . GOD delivered you from the hand of Saul
o . . . GOD gave you your master's house and your master's wives
o . . . GOD gave you the house of Israel and Judah AND
o GOD WOULD GIVE MORE IF THIS WAS NOT ENOUGH

Everything David possesses has been given to him by God. Like David, Success sometimes gradually changes people. Overtime
• we are changed,
• we do not see it,
• we do not recognize the ways we once rejected are now a part of us
His power, and fame changed a humble man into
• A man with the unbridled lust for more
• A man with an ego and followers telling him that he deserves more and
• A man with power making it easy for him to get more even though his lust was for the wife of another
David's clear disobedience is a sin against God.
1. He has ceased to humbly acknowledge God as the Giver of all things.
2. He has ceased to look to God to provide him with all his needs -- and his desires and goes after them himself
The tells us that David is a “man after God's own heart,” and yet in this instance, David “despised the Word of the Lord.” While David does repent and the guilt of his sin is forgiven, these consequences will not be reversed. The lord struck the son of David and Bathsheba and he died.

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