A SINNER CUT OFF AND A SINNER CONVERTED
[p. 127] A SINNER CUT OFF AND A SINNER CONVERTED
1 Kings 20: 35 - 43; 2 Samuel 12: 1 - 13
You will see, dear friends, that I have read about two kings: one of them, Ahab, who is spoken of in the first scripture, was an inveterate sinner. He is said to have been the worst of all Israel’s kings; having added to his wickedness an alliance with Jezebel who was a murderess. The other monarch, David, well known, was not an inveterate sinner, but a great saint, a prophet, too, and a psalmist, but also a sinner. He had after his conversion committed two great sins, one of which is mentioned in the passage I read. I will come to him finally, but the similarity in these two passages is striking: the one king, Ahab, guilty in the passage mentioned of failure in trust, a common thing amongst men; indeed, it has marked men from the beginning; the other, David, guilty of covetousness; he had been enjoined not to covet his neighbour’s wife, and he did, and his covetousness led to murder.
Ahab’s sin particularly in view here is failure in a trust, as I said; such is very common; it began indeed with Adam and Eve, and has marked perhaps every man and woman ever since to some extent. Adam, as you will know, was entrusted with dominion, and with the care of the garden; he was to dress it and guard it. And we are told later that he transgressed in this respect; he was put under covenant in regard to the garden, and he transgressed. He was covetous, too, and he failed in trust, and that is the particular sin spoken of in this passage I read in regard of Ahab. It is for each of us to see whether it applies to us, as unconverted, if indeed there be such here. I hope there is not. You may say to me, ‘Well, we would expect that you would be glad if there were those unconverted here’; but I cannot but be glad if they are all converted. If every single person in this room is converted the more thankful I am, and it will not in the least interfere with what I am saying. If there are any unconverted it is for you to challenge your own heart as to why you have failed under this heading. There are many counts against you, but God is often pleased to take up one particular count; in these scriptures it is one sin, in each case. David’s was a dual sin, but it was really one, covetousness begetting murder. It is God’s way indeed to convict under one heading.
The number of sins of which Ahab was guilty would be beyond count as far as we are concerned. The Spirit of God stresses that he was an exceedingly wicked man, but He confines Himself here to this one count, that he was untrustworthy in a trust committed to his hands. He had had wonderful consideration from God and if there is one unconverted person here tonight I can say the same to you, that you have had up to the present time wonderful consideration from God. You may have never thanked Him once; the air you breathe, the food you eat, the sun, the clothes you wear and thousands of other things are evidence of God’s consideration for you; and so it was with Ahab. It is indeed striking that God spoke so often to him, and that kindly, giving him support in two instances, so that he was able in war to overcome vastly superior armies to his own. And in many other instances God showed consideration for him in spite of his wickedness. And so it is that God is showing consideration for the Ahabs at the present time, particularly those in responsibility. In a sense Ahab represents the whole christian profession, he represents the responsibility in the profession, while Jezebel, his wife, represents the corrupting element in the profession. He is responsible for her. He, Ahab, is particularly responsible,
[p. 129] and God is constantly showing him kindness and consideration, supporting him against his enemies. And so today God is working in christendom, for the preaching is in christendom; this is not a partisan meeting, it is not sectarian. The gospel preached here tonight is in relation to the whole testimony of God and every meeting like this has the same character. They carry with them the evidence of God’s consideration for christendom. In such meetings as this there is a clear sounding out of the testimony of God in the gospel and that testimony is for the Pope, for the Archbishop, for every dignitary in christendom, as well as for every poor man and beggar, for God is no respecter of persons, and the testimony today is for the whole profession. God is carrying on in spite of adverse conditions and apathy on the part of those whom He would serve, and so in this particular instance God is focusing his testimony on Ahab under the count that he is responsible for a charge. And so this prophet suffers in order that the testimony that God intended should come to him. No one is rightly affected if not in some sense characterised by suffering. Paul said he endured all things for the elect’s sake that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.
So this prophet says to a man, “Smite me”. Normally it would be ‘Do not smite me’. But here he is a witness for God ready to suffer. He would present to the leading man in the profession the divine thought. In order that there should be salvation for men, and a gospel testimony, there must be suffering. There are those who advocate a bloodless christianity, who would either deny the atoning sacrifice of Jesus or becloud it, but God is insisting that the only ground on which man can be saved is through the atoning sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ. And how can we present it more effectively than by suffering ourselves?
[p. 130] Those who present the testimony are to have some sense of this characteristic. So this man says to his fellow, “Smite me”. The man says, ‘No, I will not do that’. Possibly he was a unitarian, one who would say, ‘Why should a loving God cause anyone to suffer?’ But then, beloved friends, if we are to be exempt from suffering someone must suffer; that is the gospel, that someone has suffered, “that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures; and that he was buried”, 1 Corinthians 15: 3, 4. He “himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2: 24); the Lord Jesus Christ entered into death and not only death but crucifixion. He suffered. So this servant of God asked a man to smite him. ‘No’, he said, ‘I will not do that’. He did not believe in an atonement through suffering, that is the spiritual meaning of the passage. He was in accord with the king, who let the king of Syria, the enemy of God, off without penalty, and this is what we are doing if we are not converted up to the present time, we are letting the culprit off without suffering and talking of the world as if it were not under penalty. God is calling to account about it. He would say, as here, ‘You have let a man go whom I have appointed to destruction; you are giving him full rein — as far as you are concerned’. This man says, ‘No, I will not smite you, christianity does not demand that’. ‘Well’, the prophet says, ‘If you do not smite me, you will be smitten’. If you refuse the atoning sacrifice of Christ, that it meant suffering from the hand of God, that a just God must punish sin; if you refuse that you will suffer and you will die in your sins without hope. You will be raised in them, and consigned to eternal punishment in them. It is a terrible thing to deny the atoning sufferings of Jesus; there are those who do it. Well, presently a lion came and slew the man according to the word of the Lord, and then the prophet said to another, “Smite me”, and he smote him violently. That man believes that the Lord Jesus was smitten violently; he believes that the Lord Jesus endured unmitigated judgment as the Sin-bearer, that He endured the cross, that He endured the forsaking of God. That man smote the prophet violently and wounded him; he is now in correspondence with Christ; he conceals himself and waits for the king. You may be just like that, in that God has had an ambush here waiting on you. The prophet knew the king would pass there; that man was unfaithful to God, and this testimony of God was waiting by the wayside. You may have been invited to come here tonight, and the testimony is waiting for you; this meeting here tonight is in order that there may be a word for you. So here is this man, he is thinking of the sinner who has failed in his trust, who is unfaithful in his covenant, and he says to the king, ‘A man brought me a man, and he told me to keep him, and that I should pay a talent of silver if I did not keep him; I was busy, and the man is gone’. He is excusing himself. What is he doing that for? He is putting the thoughts of the king into words which immediately came into his mind. God, as it were, would apprise you of the thoughts that arise as the testimony is brought to you, as you are convicted and as the light strikes you. If you wish to resist it you will excuse yourself, you are ‘busy’, but you cannot get off like that, you know; God will not let you off. In this gospel period God is aiming at man’s conscience; you may trifle, you may excuse yourself, but He will not let you off; He has a way of keeping the thing on your conscience that you may confess. If you do not confess as time after time God has brought it to your conscience you may be like Ahab, suddenly cut off, and that without remedy. Ahab says, ‘Well, you condemn yourself’, but the prophet says, ‘It is you’. It may be there is somebody here that will criticise [p. 132] others in order to screen himself, but the testimony of God is that you are the person. And Ahab went to his house sullen and displeased; there was no self-judgment with him, there was no heart humbling with him. He had allowed the king of Syria his liberty although he was the enemy of God and the enemy of God’s people. Is that a small thing? No, God says that is a great thing and Ahab’s life hung upon it, and he was cut off without remedy. How solemn that is! He had another opportunity, it is true. He was covetous, and his wife relieved him by killing Naboth, and God again convicted him and Ahab humbled himself, but it meant very little, as the next chapter tells us that he was cut off without remedy. He is a striking example of hardness of heart in men who even know something about humbling themselves, and yet pursue their wicked way and are cut off without remedy. May I appeal to anyone like that here tonight. You are particularly guilty, in that you have transgressed in this way, if you are not a believer in Christ. God is calling upon you to judge yourself. Do not be like Ahab and return to your house sullen and displeased. Humble yourself before God for it is a question of repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now I go on to David and here the case is very different. David, although guilty of great sin, knew how to judge himself. What is so remarkable about David is that he is said to have had a seer, his name was Gad; he had him almost all his life. We read of him in the cave of Adullam, and we read of him late in David’s life when he sinned in numbering the people. Why bring that in, you say, what has Gad got to do with this? It means that David always allowed something near him to prick his conscience, he would never have a seared conscience. The real difficulty with many christians who sin, and they do sin and need to be converted when they sin, is that [p. 133] they do not keep the conscience right. David never dismissed Gad. So when he committed the great sin of numbering the people Gad was there, and God used him. So it is when anything happens to any of us, if I have a conscience, if I maintain my conscience, if I do not disallow my conscience, then I am safe, for God can get at me. If I harden my heart, if I steel my conscience, as they did in the wilderness, then there is no hope. We must keep on our Gads. Gad was said to be a seer. He was a prophet, of course, but he was a seer, and the idea of a conscience is that it discerns when we are unfaithful to God. We may be untrue secretly or publicly, we may dismiss our Gads, and go and do as we please and the course may be long and the end sorrowful, but if we retain our Gads as accusers we are all right. We read indeed of consciences that excuse, but they are not divinely given consciences. David kept his Gad with him, he was a man that would accuse David when a sin was committed. Here you have Nathan. David never complained about Gad or Nathan, he was always ready to listen to them. He had committed a great sin; he had coveted, and he had committed murder to cover his covetousness. He had not judged it; he was guilty of it and God held him to it, for He requires what is past even in a christian. Nathan is available to God and he comes in fearlessly to the king, and speaks his parable. How gracious of God to get round us in that way! “There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor. The rich had very many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing at all but one little ewe lamb”. How affecting! It was such a parable as would appeal to a man like David. God knows how to speak to us as sin occurs; He knows just what will reach your conscience and He prepared His servant Nathan to speak this beautiful parable to the sinner. How gracious! David deserved to be smitten; it was a [p. 134] terrible sin, but David loved God at the bottom, he was a true believer.
It may be there are those here who are true at the bottom but who have turned away and committed sins, whose consciences are not clear. A christian will not get clear until he confesses. If we confess our sins He will forgive us; God forgives confessed sins.
So Nathan goes over the ground touchingly, and David said, ‘That man deserves to die!’ So he did, but he did not die; God was gracious to him. You may have confessed Christ in earlier days but now something has happened. God is peculiarly concerned about those in whom He has wrought. The woman in Luke 13 was bound for eighteen years. So here the devil tempted David to do this great sin, and it has not been settled. God is now approaching the sinner that the sin might be judged and forgiven.
There is forgiveness for you on the sure ground of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. God had forgiveness in mind in sending the prophet Nathan to David, but not until confession was made could this be realised.
So the prophet speaks his parable, and says to David, “Thou art the man!” I may be speaking to some one here tonight who would judge in someone else the very thing he is guilty of. That is exactly the case with David. He not only took the wife of Urijah but he slew Urijah, though he condemned with anger the man who took the ewe lamb from the poor man.
God is here tonight to get at some conscience, to get you to turn and judge yourself instead of someone else. David could judge somebody else well, but Nathan says, ‘You are the man’. David does not go to his house sullen and vexed; that is the great and glorious difference between him and Ahab. He says, “I have sinned against the Lord”. I do not ask you to come out here publicly, but get to God and tell Him about the matter. It may be an old thing of eighteen years ago as in the case of that woman in [p. 135] Luke 13, or it may be a recent matter. Whatever it is and whenever it happened, God is calling on you tonight to judge it, and to be free in your soul before Him, and before your brethren. God is calling upon us as to these things, and if we are true men at bottom we will come forward and tell God what David told Him, “I have sinned” — there is no palliation, no excuse. I would allude to Psalm 139, in which the psalmist appeals to God to search his heart. He appeals to God to try him and to search him to see if there be any wicked way in him; to lead him in the way everlasting. And then Psalm 51 — the psalm every one of us should study, for our hearts are extremely mean, and we need to be constantly in self-judgment — that psalm is like a bath that we should take now and again and we should maintain the effect of it always. “Blessed are they that wash their robes”; that psalm is excellent for that. The historic psalms are always helpful because the heading tells you the circumstances in which they were written. The heading of Psalm 51 is just those circumstances I have read about tonight. David had committed a terrible sin, and the psalm shows how deeply he felt it, but he went to the bottom and reached Zion. So it is if anything happens to us, we come back to the counsel and mercy of God, and we shall see that God has had in His mind to bring us back, to restore us to privilege. The psalm shows us how David reached Zion. He had dreadfully dishonoured Zion, he had caused the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, but he stands out as a glorious contrast to Ahab. He is a type of a believer who gets away from God, and is recovered. And now God is speaking to you to bring you to your senses, that you may confess to Him, and come out in repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Spirit of God would appeal to you. The apostle Paul reasoned with a man about righteousness and [p. 136] judgment to come and the man was moved. So, too, with Agrippa. “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian”. What force there was in the apostle’s appeal! One would love to know of anyone needing an appeal, anyone who would say, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian”, Acts 26:28. But you need more than that, you need a complete breakdown as to God, a complete persuasion that neither death nor life nor any other creature can separate you from the love of God (Romans 8: 38, 39). That is the kind of persuasion one would seek for your soul and it comes by repentance towards God and faith towards the Lord Jesus Christ. David says, “I have sinned against Jehovah”, and then Nathan says, “Jehovah has also put away thy sin; thou shalt not die”. What a beautiful word! There was no such word to Ahab, as he returned to his house, sullen and vexed. David did not do that, there was restoration of soul. The chapter goes on to tell us how beautifully David was restored, he moved in the light of the grace of God. And the grace of God is here tonight in a far greater way than it was then. David arrived at a point where he could bless God. May God bless his word to all of us.