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Well, hello, and once more very welcome. Tonight we are to discuss the difference between the penalty of sin and the consequence of sin. Now, so that I can make clear what I mean by those semi-technical terms, let me use an analogy. Here is a young Christian businessman of around thirty years of age, and he gets called to a business conference in London. And there at the party that follows, he yields to temptation and drinks more than he should and gets drunk. As he moves out from the party room down the steep flight of stairs to the foyer, being slightly drunk, he gets a step wrong, stumbles and goes head over heels all the way down the stairs, clatter bang, bang, bang, bang, down to the foyer, and so smashes up one of his legs that the doctors in the end decide that they cannot, uh, set it, they must amputate it. Now, when he comes to, of course, he confesses his sin to the Lord in deep and genuine contrition, and the Lord forgives him. There and then on the spot, of course. But what about the leg he's lost? If he prayed, Lord, make the leg grow again, what do you think the Lord would do? Do a miracle and make the de- leg grow again? Or would it be the fact that though he has forgiveness of the penalty of sin, the consequence will last as long as life lasts. You say, but one day the Lord will come, won't he? And the man will, if dead, be raised again. If not, he'll be changed and have a body like the body of the Lord Jesus. So he'll have two legs then, won't he? Yes, he will forever, do you see? There you are, you say, what about the consequences now? Well, for the time being, I'll just change my phrase. The difference between, uh, uh, the penalty of sin and the consequences, the temporal consequences of sin. Temporal meaning until the Lord comes. Now, I, I suggest that there is such a difference, so let us look at the New Testament first, and to consider what it has to say on the question of the penalty and the forgiveness of sins. And I do but remind you of verses that you will know very, very well, to which we all of us cling in the times of our need throughout life. We have redemption through his blood, says the epistle to the Ephesians, and similarly in Colossians. We have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. Says Acts chapter thirteen, in the words of Paul, by him everyone who believes receives forgiveness of sins. Indeed, by him everyone who believes is justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses. Our blessed Lord, who is to be the judge, uh, on the great white throne, has told us explicitly, he who hears my word and believes on him that sent me has everlasting life and shall not come into condemnation, but has already passed over from death to life. And if we needed it, God's word adds in Hebrews chapter ten, according to the new covenant, God has undertaken and given his word of honor, their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. We need to be just a little bit careful about the meaning of the term remember in that verse. When God says he will not remember our sins and iniquities anymore, he doesn't mean that he will eventually forget that we've ever been sinners. I don't think you will forget it either. When you hear the choirs of heaven singing, worthy is the lamb that was slain, will you have to nudge your next door neighbor and say, what does that mean, that bit? Why was he slain? Won't you know? And when God sees the nail prints in our Savior's hand, will God find himself saying, I can't think what he has that for? No, God will not forget, nor shall we, that we have been sinners. But we shall thank God for his absolute assurance that he will not get out his judgment book, open the page, read the long list of our sins, and then serve out the punishment for them. That he has promised never to do. He has wiped the slate clean, says Colossians chapter two, obliterated the guilt of our sins. Our sins and iniquities, therefore, he will never bring up against us again. As far as the penalty goes. Let me emphasize that, therefore, I am not undermining by anything I am about to say, I am not undermining the question of our forgiveness, of our assurance, of our acceptance with God. But now let me quote, uh, two passages in the New Testament that point out to us that there is a difference between the pardon that we have for the penalty of sin, on the one hand, and the consequences of sin on the other. And to begin with, we read in Galatians chapter five, and if you have a, uh, uh, a Bible with you, I should be grateful if you would look it up so you see I'm not making it up to suit my sermon. Verse, chapter six of Galatians and verse one. Brothers, even if a man be overtaken in any trespass, you, you who are spiritual, restore such an one in a spirit of meekness, looking to thyself, lest thou also be tempted. And you see the gracious way that Paul phrased it. He says, looking to yourself, lest thou also be tempted. The implication is that if you were tempted, like this brother has been, you might have fallen just as he has fallen. Do bear that in mind. But, uh, bear you one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if a man thinketh himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each man prove his own work, and then shall he have his glorying in regard of himself alone, and not of his neighbor. For each man shall bear his own burden. But let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things, be not deceived, God is not mocked. For whatsoever a one sows, that shall he also reap. For he that sows to his own flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. But he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap eternal life. It is a law of nature that you reap what you sow. It is a law that God himself was built into his universe and into our lives. And hence the warning, he who sows to his own flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. He that sows to the spirit shall of the spirit reap eternal life. Be not deceived, God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap. I come from an agricultural background, and in my youth it would pay the farmers to grow barley rather than wheat. To see there was much more profit on the barley. But we'll suppose, shall we, a Christian farmer, and he had it, so to speak, by a word of God in his ear that he was to sow wheat, you see. God wanted him to sow wheat. And at first he thought, yes, he would agree with God and he'd sow wheat, but when it came near and he looked at the prices in the newspaper for, for wheat, and then he compared it with barley, he yielded to temptation and he sowed barley in his field, you see. Well, like barley does, it took a while to come up. And then when it came up, it looked nicer, green little, uh, leaf, but then when it grew. He saw, yes, it was really barley. And conscience smote him, do see. He disobeyed the Lord. What should he do now? So he confesses it before the Lord. Lord, do forgive me, I have been a fool. You told me to grow wheat, and I've sown barley. Oh Lord, have forgive me. And of course, the Lord would forgive him, wouldn't he? If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins. But suppose the man then prayed, and Lord, while you're at it, um, turn this barley into wheat, make it grow up wheat. So suppose the Lord would. Would the man have to face the consequence of his disobedience? Forgiven, no penalty, but what he would reap would be wheat. Sorry, what he would reap would be barley, not wheat, would it? God doesn't necessarily change the consequence. And so we're going to look back now into the Old Testament, to the book of Samuel, this time the second book of Samuel, for a very famous example of this. This is the story of King David, after he had come to power. And as you may remember, God is open and honest in his word. At a certain time, David took the wife of one of his heroic soldiers named Uriah and committed adultery with her. So let's read, first of all, from chapter twelve, where the prophet comes to rebuke David for what he has done. This is chapter twelve and verse seven. And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul. And I gave thee thy master's house and thy master's wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah. And if that had been too little, I would have added unto thee such and such things. Why have you despised the word of the Lord to do that which is evil in his sight. Thou hast smitten Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon. Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from thine house, because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife. Now saith the Lord, behold, I will raise up evil against thee, uh, out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes and give them unto thy neighbor, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun. For thou didst it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun. And David said unto Nathaniel, uh, unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said unto David, the Lord also has put away thy sin, thou shalt not die. How be it? Because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme. The child also that is born unto thee shall surely die. And from that sad passage, we see two things at once, do we not? When David was convicted of his sins through God's word, through Nathan the prophet, David sincerely, contritely confessed before the Lord, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said to David, the Lord also hath put away thy sin, thou shalt not die. No penalty then. It was true then, as it is true today. If we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. But then notice the how be it. How be it because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die. One of the consequences of his sin. And there were other consequences that Nathan, uh, told him about in the earlier verses. We shall come to them presently, but take the last one. When through Nathan the prophet, God said to David, because of the grievousness of your sin, I've forgiven you, but there will be consequences. And the first consequence is this, that the child that is born of this adulterous union shall die. Then David went in before the Lord and lay on the ground and fasted and prayed and afflicted his soul and pleaded with God that the child shall live. And when the servants came to offer him food, he wouldn't eat or drink. But by the end of some days, the child died. And when David learned of it, he got up from the ground, had a bath, dressed himself in new clothes, and asked the servants to set on a meal in the palace. And the servants couldn't understand it. They said, this is very curious. Do you see why this child was still alive? He humbled himself on the ground like that and fasted and prayed. Now that the the child is, uh, uh, gone, he gets up and, uh, resumes normal life. We don't understand it. People normally mourn after a child is dead. How do you explain what David did? And David explained it thus, while the child still lived. I said in my heart, maybe the Lord will have mercy. Now notice what he says. He didn't say have mercy on the child. Perhaps the Lord will have mercy on me and spare me this sorrow. But the Lord didn't. And David had to face and accept the con- about the nature of David's sin. You say that's obvious, at least to anybody that can read English. Yes, but at the heart of it, what was involved? David sinned strongest points. He was a lovely fellow, was David. Not only courageous in battle, as with Goliath, but when he came to the throne, exceedingly merciful. He was marked by a virtue that in Hebrew is called heseth. Heseth. You needn't bother to remember that, but that's what it's called. It's a little difficult in English to translate it because it has a number of connotations. It can mean kindness or loving kindness. It's a word that God uses of himself, of God's loving kindness. What a delightful word it is, God's kindness, his loving kindness is over all his works. And David was exceedingly kind, loving kind. But then in certain contexts, the word takes on another meaning, and it means loyal to a covenant. And you get one ex- uh, a superb example of it in this very book of second Samuel, chapter nine. If you have it in front of you, just look at it. Chapter nine, verse one: and David said, is there yet any that is left of the house of Saul that I may show him kindness? Here comes our word again, heseth, for Jonathan's sake. The story behind it is this, that Jonathan was the crown prince in Israel, but when he saw David do what even he didn't do, that is go out to fight the giant Goliath, Jonathan's heart fell in love with him. Magnificent warrior, magnificent courage. And when Jonathan came back with the head of Goliath in his hand, and when David came back with the head of Goliath in his hand, Jonathan undid his belt. Now that was a royal belt, carrying the royal insigni- insignia. Jonathan was a proud prince. In stripping himself of his bent of his belt and his raiment, Jonathan was virtually handing over the right to the throne to David. And though King Saul, Jonathan's father, persecuted David, Jonathan stuck by him loyally. And when at last it became apparent that David must leave, must flee for his life and get away from Saul, Jonathan came out to him and had a farewell message. Look, David, he said, I know you're going to be king in my place, but when you have come to the throne and God has put down all your enemies, David, please show hesed kindness to me, loyalty to me. Swear to me that you'll not cut off my name and my house from the earth. And David swore to him. And two Samuel chapter nine has reached the stage where David is universally triumphant, and God has cut off the majority of his enemies before him. And David says, is there yet any that is left of the house of Saul, that I may show kindness to him for Jonathan's sake? Good old David, loyal in spite of his position. And as a result, he invited Mephibosheth, David's, uh, Jonathan's son to come and eat bread with him at his table in the palace, and restored to him all the estates that had been Saul's estate. Magnificent loyalty. In chapter ten, we read how that the king of Ammon died and was succeeded by his son. And David said, I will show kindness unto Hanan, the son of Nahash, because his father showed kindness to me. Loyalty, in other words. They both were kings, David, king of Israel, this chap, king of Ammon. And the father, the King of Ammon, had been kind and loyal to David, and when he died, David sent ambassadors to convey his condolence to the heir who had now ascended the throne. Loyalty, kindness. David was marked by it. Alas, this time, the king of Adam, the Yu- the Ammon, the young king, rebuffed David's kindness in the most shocking way. And when they saw they had, uh, inflamed the nation of Israel by their brutality and the way they shamed David's ambassadors, they asked the Syrians to come and join them and fought against Israel. David was obliged to fight, and it was a fight that went on for some two or three years, apparently. So at one time, at the time of year when kings went out to war, David sent Joab, his commander in chief, with the armies to fight against Ammon in the ongoing war, and David stayed behind and took it easy. Well, I suppose he was getting on for middle age. You know, time when people have got tired of catching the, the seven thirty down to Belfast or something like that, you see, and getting home at seven at night and all that kind of stuff, you see. And he was taking it a bit easy. One afternoon he'd been having his siesta, and that lasted a long time, and he got up from his siesta, you see, and walked on the house, the roof of the house, and nearby he saw a woman, and she was bathing. She was very beautiful. Inquired who she was. She was the wife of Uriah. Her husband was at the front, one of David's heroes. And... he took her. How was that loyal? To Uriah, her husband. Away at the front, fighting for David and fighting for his God. Whatever had come over David. Then the woman told David she was pregnant. Seemed to have suffered a panic attack or something. He must cover it up at any cost. So he wrote a, a letter to Joab, the commander in chief at the front, and said, send me back, uh, Nathan, please, uh, uh, uh, Uriah, please. And when he came, the king asked him, of course, and how's the war getting on, and how are the captains behaving, and are you having success with your tactics, and this, that, and the other, as though he were really concerned about the war. And then he said, well, and now, good man, uh, I'd like to see you tomorrow, but you go home and and and and and take a meal with your wife and so forth. Hoping that nature would do a task and the birth of the child to be would be uncertain of his parentage. It didn't work. For Uriah that night went out and slept at the king's door with the king's servants, who were on guard. When David learned of this in the morning, he called this Uriah and said, why didn't you go down home, my good man? Now listen to Uriah. This is chapter eleven of second Samuel and verse eleven. Uriah said unto David, The ark and Israel and Judah abide in booths, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are encamped in the open field. Shall I then go into mine house to eat and drink and to lie with my wife? As thou livest and as thy soul liveth, I will not do this thing. Ooh. What loyalty. What is in the field? And the presence of the Lord is on the ark, their tents, roughing it. I couldn't, I couldn't live with my conscience if I went home and indulged myself in comfort and delight while the Lord's armies are at it in the field. Oh, what magnificent loyalty, yes, to the aforesaid Uriah, though Uriah didn't know it. So he said, you'll come to dinner with me tonight then, won't you? And that night at dinner, David tried to make him drunk. To overcome his sense of loyalty. But Uriah, drunk though he may have been, had a deeper sense of loyalty, and he slept at the king's door again. This was getting very dangerous for the king. It would all come out, he felt. So he wrote a letter to Joab, the commander-in-chief, sealed it and gave it to Uriah to take back to Joab and to the army. And here was Uriah faithfully carrying out the king's wish, unknowing that inside it was written his death warrant. Joab, the commander in chief, was to put him in the place where the strongest enemy were, to make sure that Uriah got killed. Can you explain it? What happened to a man? In what was his strongest point, if you might say, his sense of kindness and loyalty. All overwhelmed. And when the message report came from his commander-in-chief back home to the palace, and it ended that your servant Uriah is dead as well, said David to the messenger, oh, tell Joab when you get back, you can't worry about that, don't lay it to heart, you know the sword devours one and another, and it's potluck, isn't it? Really? Tell me, what would you have done to David if you had been God? Forgiven him? Well, that, of course, is what God did, as we read. God sent Nathan to him to denounce his sin. And when David confessed it, and I have sinned before the Lord, the prophet was authorized to say, the Lord has put away your sin. It'd almost bring tears to your eyes, wouldn't it? Who is a pardoning God like thee? Or who has grace so rich and free, pardoned from the penalty. But what about the consequences? Now God, through the great prophet Nathan, tells him what the consequences will be. The consequences won't be accidental. God has foreseen it and will arou- a- a- a- allow them to happen. So much so will he allow them to happen that as you read the text, you would think that God had made these things happen. You have slain Uriah with the sword. David, the sword from now on will never depart from your own house. You see, what you sow, you reap. You took another man's wife, didn't you, David? You did it secretly. I will take your wives and give them to a neighbor of yours, and he shall do it on the top of the palace in the sight of all Israel. Consequences. You say, why did God do that? It seems to me, I submit it to you, and you're going to have your, your chance to protest when the chairman takes over, you'll see. That forgiveness is one thing, but David must be learned now by experience under the discipline of God, what disloyalty actually means by experiencing it himself. It is the grace of God, says Titus chapter two, that teaches us that denying ungodly lusts, we should live soberly and righteously in this present world. We know what happened. Let me just remind your memory of the stories that follow this in Second Samuel. Absalom, who was the son of his third wife, was a very beautiful man, and he had a sister, and she, like him, was very beautiful indeed. Her name was Tamar. The crown prince, who was son of David's first wife, was called Amnon, and he conceived a passion for his sister and couldn't think how he could satisfy it. But there was an advisor in the court, a wise man. It's not only number ten that has advisors, uh, Josie. There was an advisor there, and he was a very cunning man, sophisticated man, and he said to the young prince Amnon, he said, what are you looking so down in the mouth and narrow in the face for these days? And he said, well, actually, I'm in love with my sister Tamar. I don't know what to do about it. Oh, he said, I'll tell you what to do. Go home and, uh, lie down on your bed and pretend to be ill, you see, sick. And when the king comes to see you, as he will, of course, uh, uh, uh, uh, and says, how are you? And say, well, I don't feel very well, really. Um, please send me my sister Tamar to see to come cook some, some nice fresh rolls in my presence and back up my appetite, and I can eat. Yes, I'll do that, said David. So David went uh, back and told Tamar to come to his house. But when she got there and had made the cakes, he raped her. Then raped her, he now hated her, turned her out, bolted the door, and exposed her to public shame. When David heard of it... I, I don't know how he felt. Do you? Why hadn't he seen through it? He had himself, the king had told Tamar to go there. Why hadn't he seen through Amnon? Ill my foot. Nothing to do with the weakness of the poor man is ill. It was simple lust. And David had facilitated it. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. David was very angry. Absalom, whose sister it was, didn't say a word, but nurtured revenge in his heart for two whole years, determined to get his own back on Amnon. So after two years, he, he, he went to see the king, and the c- and he said to the king, now I have sheep shearers, you know, on my estate. And sheep shearing in those days was a time when you, you made merry, like harvest home in Britain, you see. You would make joyful with your friends and have a party, and you called your friends, even distinguished ones, to join in the fun at sheep shearing. So he came to the king and said, please, your majesty, would you come and the king's sons and come to my party sheep shearing? And the king said, no, that's very kind of you, of course, but no, if a whole lot of us came, we should be an impossible expense to you and a burden. No, no. All right, he said, well, then let Amnon come. The one that had raped your sister. Did the king have second thoughts? Why would you invite Amnon, he said. Oh, but Absalom, he was good at the talk, and he pressed the king and pleaded with him, and in the end, the king gave permission for Amnon to go along with all the others of the king's sons. And when the party was merry, Absalom commanded his troops. They murdered Amnon at the party. Oh, how do you suppose David felt? How they had implicated him in it. He had actually given permission for Amnon to go. Why didn't he see through it? Why didn't he see through himself? That night when he walked on the top of the palace and saw Bathsheba. Absalom, having murdered his brother to escape the wrath of the king, went into exile, voluntary exile. After two or three years, the king grew soft at heart. The first chap was dead anyway, and really he liked Absalom. He was a fine fellow. So the king was persuaded to have him back, and eventually kicked- kissed him. But there was no I'm sorry, not from Absalom. Nothing but defiance. The king kissed him, and the very next day, almost, so to speak, Absalom was plotting a revolt against the king to seize the throne. And when Absalom called one of his chief advisors to advise him how to go about it, the advisor said, I tell you what, Absalom, I should take your father's conch vines that he left in the house, spread a tent on the roof of the palace and go into them in the sight of all Israel. Make it such a shocking thing that Israel will see there cannot be any possible reconciliation between you and the king. Will he stop at nothing? Is there no sanctity that will put the brake on? Tell me what I should next do, says Absalom to his advisor. What you want to do, he says, is to give me a few troops. We'll go down, now David is fleeing, and before he gets established anywhere, I will consecrate on him, I will slit his throat. That's all you'll need to do. Slit the king's throat. There's no other leader around, and the nation will come back to you. I think that's a very good idea, said Absalom. As David himself said, somewhat later, the very sun that came out of my bowels has risen up to slay me. Disloyalty. You say, why did God allow it? David was forgiven as soon as he confessed his sin. But David would need to be disciplined, wouldn't he? Isn't that why God allowed? Or what do you think? Well, you'll tell me afterwards, so sure. Need to be made to feel in his very inner soul the evil of disloyalty. I have dealt at length on these unhappy incidents. They stand on scripture, in scripture, for whatsoever is written aforetime is written for our learning. To warn us. For at heart, we're no better than David. We need constantly to ask forgiveness. Assured that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. But we should remember there's a difference between the, the pardon of the penalty of sin and the consequences of sin. By the consequences, it is not God being tyrannical and hard-hearted. He allows consequences that grace, his grace may teach us by experience to deny fleshly lusts. For it remains true that whatsoever a man sows, that shall he reap. If we sow to the spirit, we shall reap everlasting life. Because I've already got it. Oh yes, of course you have. You trust in Christ, you have already got eternal life. Mm-hmm. A child of five years old has got physical life and mental life, but it will need a lot of education to develop its enjoyment of it in all its potential, won't it? So the moment we trust Christ, we have eternal life. Thank God for it, and can never lose it. We shall need a lot of training to develop its potentials. And where we go wrong, our gracious Father, by his grace, allows us to feel the bitterness of Of sin. sin. That we might be prepared and strengthened to resist what otherwise might run riot in our lives. I cannot let the matter rest there. I must stress the fact that after this, David recovered and did a lot of wonderful things in his life, and in particularly in old age, he spent his last years preparing treasure of every kind of sort for the building of the house of God, which was built in the days of Solomon. The house was exceeding magnificent, and David's later days were exceedingly profitable. Lest any should think that because we have done wrong and we have strayed, that that's us finished. No, there is restoration. Peter, you may remember, who denied the Lord, the Lord had prayed for him that his faith shouldn't fail. Will you permit one little example of it? Some fifty years ago, when I first came to Northern Ireland, I was invited to preach the gospel in what was then the Victoria Hall, and I had chosen to preach on the confessions of the apostles, and this particular Sunday night I was to preach on Peter and how he, uh, he was the one who valued our Lord as the rock, you see. And I asked why would he value the Lord as a rock? And I pointed out on the two occasions he found himself sinking, and the Lord had upheld him. As he tried to walk on the water and sank, and the Lord held him up. In the garden of the high priest, when he lost his moral courage and denied the Lord Jesus, that the Lord eventually restored him. So I preached. The next day I had a phone call from a businessman in town, inviting me to lunch, where he told me his story. He was an active young believer, now beginning to preach, gone into business up in Londonderry, prospered. He was offered a shady deal. He looked around and saw other Christians doing similar shady deals and fell for it. He said, David, there began my decline. He said, I prospered in business, I had my own factory, I became an MP in Stormont. But he said, I gave up on God and the Bible and the meetings completely. He said, my business began to go wrong, and I lost my seat in Stormont, and I came back by the factory on Saturday night at two o'clock in the morning, trying to save my business, and I came by the Victoria Hall, and it said this dog's body was going to preach there. He said, I didn't know you from Adam. He said, I felt an overwhelming desire. I should come to that meeting. He said, I came to it, the first meeting in I don't know how many years, and there you were, he said, preaching on Peter, and you described Peter as he sank under the onslaught, uh, in the the high priest's court, as a man falling down to a pit and trying to get hold of the sides of the pit to find out they were clear and he was slipping down. He said, that was exactly me. And he came back to the Lord after forty years and lived to prove it was genuine. I've talked about the temporal consequences of sin. Some of you might like to ask whether there are any eternal consequences, but I said enough and perhaps too much, and I yield place to my superior.