Title: Jedidiah/2 Samuel 12:15-25
Contents <2 Samuel 12:15-25> "Jedidiah"
Faith means expecting what a third person has done. It is Buddhism, not Christianity, that seeks to approach God based on what has happened within me. Christianity is believing and moving forward with events that happened outside of you. Romans 4:5 says, "To him who works not, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness." No body can be justified by bodily works. Faith is trusting in “one righteousness besides the law” (Romans 3:20).
God did not send the prophet Nathan to David to make David realize his mistake, repent, and do good works to become righteous. He was sent to uncover and expose David's sins. His sin command reveals that he lacks mercy and that he disrespects the Word of God.
However, humans hate it when they expose or expose their sins. Even when preaching, when the issue of sin is discussed, everyone hates to hear it. Now, let's stop talking about sin and slowly talk about God's grace and love, and furthermore, let's talk about things that we can present before God after we are saved. Only then will I become more fleshy, so why not be more loyal and serve? However, in order to talk about God's tremendous love and grace, we have to talk about the dirty and filthy human beings. To talk about God's mercy and grace without talking about the seriousness of human sin and the seriousness of God's judgment for that sin is false love and false grace.
In today's text, God struck David's child born to Bathsheba, Uriah's wife. The reason was to kill. David committed the sin, but do you kill the child instead of David who actually committed the sin? As a result, the guilty party is saved. This is the fulfillment of the Mosaic Covenant that the Davidic Covenant holds. In the time of Moses, animal sacrifices were required in order to receive the forgiveness of human sins. But the truth is that the essence of true forgiveness of sins lies deeper. It was that a man without blemish would die in his place because of man's sin. The Bible describes this as "the bone the Lord broke" (Psalm 51:8). The 'bone broken by the Lord' here means that God Himself strikes the elect who bear the sins of mankind instead of the burnt offering or peace offering that can be broken by human hands. He is Uriah, the child who died for the sins of David, and it means Jesus Christ who died on the cross. In other words, this is the way God directly strikes and saves others, showing the perfection of the sacrifice mentioned in the Mosaic Covenant.
The essence of the Davidic covenant is that all human beings are sinners. When church members only open their mouths, they say 'sinners and sinners', but it is not a sinner who opens his mouth like that, but a sinner that is revealed only in the light of God's covenant. It means a sinner who violates the Word of God, not a sinner from an ethical and moral standpoint. It means that no human being is a sinner who cannot escape from the covenant. And the sacrifice that God truly wanted was not a burnt offering or a peace offering, but a 'broken spirit'. The salvation of Israel is possible only through the selective grace of restoring this broken heart.
Also, the Davidic Covenant is another word for the King's Covenant. In other words, it is a covenant that 'if one king obeys God's word well, the whole people will live, and if the king does something wrong, the whole nation will be destroyed'. But even though King David sinned, the nation of Israel was able to recover, not because David was good, but because of the unchanging Davidic covenant. The Davidic Covenant, like the Abrahamic Covenant, is a covenant between God and God, not a covenant between God and humans due to the nature of the covenant. For example, when the covenant was made with Abraham, as shown in the ceremony, God and Abraham did not pass through the separated offerings, but God alone passed as a torch. This is an expression of God's will that even if Abraham breaks the covenant because he is weak, God will surely fulfill it in his name. Likewise, the Davidic Covenant is a covenant between God and Jesus. So, despite David's transgression, Israel was still able to recover.
With the death of the child in front of his eyes, David repented and fasted and prayed. But David's prayer was not answered. It was useless in saving a child. From this point of view, God does not accept human prayers. He does not accept human sacrifices. It is the fact that only the prayers of the Son are answered. David's fasting prayer and unbridled weeping left his servants in awe. Finally, as you said, the child died. The servants were troubled because they could not tell David about this. David, knowing this, took a clean bath and prepared food to eat. At this, the servants could not help but be surprised again. However, David was able to change his color so quickly because it was done as God had said. Because man knew that no one could change God's plan.
If David is the representative of a sinner, then Uriah, the husband of Bathsheba, who was unfairly killed, can be said to be a representative of the righteous who were unfairly sacrificed because of the sinner. It is the fact that it is not David who saves David and Israel, but Uriah, who was sacrificed by David. Therefore, the savior of the Israelites must come from the sacrificed wife of Uriah. The blood of the Gentile Uriah, a stone that came in from outside, will save the original Jewish blood, which is only a lump of sin. So Solomon, the new born child of Bathsheba, becomes the next king of Israel.
David named his son Solomon (peaceful) because he had made peace with God in his own way, but God named the child 'Jedidiah'. It means, “I have been loved by Jehovah.” The person who becomes the evidence of God's mercy and mercy will become the next king of Israel. Therefore, those who have no trace of God's mercy are not God's people, even if they are born in Israel. In Matthew 1, "The genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of Abraham and David," several women's names are mentioned. Among them, only Uriah's wife did not reveal her name despite her real name (Bathsheba). The mention of the ex-husband's name has a deep meaning, and the purpose is to show the flow of blood vessels chosen by God's grace. In addition, this genealogy serves to reveal the hidden sins of man rather than showing the splendid achievements of man. When God's covenant is given to humans, it is the covenant that is put in to reveal the original sinful nature of human blood and at the same time show what God's grace is like.
In 2 Samuel 11, the war with Ammon begins, and David's sin in between and the two victims of that sin occur. At the end of chapter 12, we see the end of the war with Ammon. What I want to show through this series of events is that it was not just a war between Ammon and Israel, but ultimately a war between David and God. So, it can be seen that the final destination of this war was to reveal the meaning of 'Jedidiya' more clearly.
The Davidic covenant has no meaning in lineage, but the fact that the stream of the covenant flows through those who know the inside story of God's love revealed to David. Therefore, it shows that the existence of David and the strength of the nation of Israel are due to the grace of Jehovah, the true King of Israel. While it shows that all human beings are subject to judgment before God because of the heinousness of human sin, the richness of God's grace is more than enough to cover human sin, and the fact that without that love we have no hope. Therefore, to have received God's undeserved love like this is a miracle among miracles, and it is a tremendous blessing that cannot be replaced with anything.