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I HAD JUST PULLED MY CAR INTO THE GARAGE AND stepped out of it when the door to the kitchen opened and my daughter, Sherrie, appeared. Her face was ashen, and there was a look of horror in her eyes. She rushed into my arms, blurting out the words, "Oh, Daddy! My baby is dead!"
I held her against my chest as she sobbed and sobbed. She was in the ninth month of her pregnancy and had just returned from a checkup with her obstetrician. He could not detect a heartbeat. As gently as he could, he explained what that meant: her unborn child had died in her womb.
The following morning Sherrie was admitted to the hospital. Her doctor induced contractions, and she quickly went into labor, knowing that her child would be stillborn. The practice of the hospital in such cases is to follow through with the procedures of an otherwise normal birth. So when the baby, a beautiful little girl, was born, she was cleaned, measured, weighed, and had her footprint recorded in ink. Then the moribund child was handed to her mother. Sherrie cuddled the baby for several minutes then handed her to her husband. After a few moments I was permitted to hold my granddaughter in my arms.
I have found it difficult to recognize newborn infants by their facial features; they all seem to look alike to me. But the image of that tiny child was burned into my memory forever. As I held her I was overwhelmed by this incredible conjunction of life and death. The child was perfectly formed in every respect.
But she was not breathing.
Sherrie and her husband, Tim, named the child Alicia. She was buried with a regular funeral service attended by our family and our pastor. We stood by the grave and wept together as we committed her body to the earth and her soul to our heavenly Father.
Every woman who has delivered a stillborn baby knows the devastation it brings to the heart. Who can experience such a thing without crying to heaven and asking, "Why?" It is normal to wonder where God is in such circumstances. It is
where the rubber of human anguish meets the road of divine providence.
This book is an effort to face those issues and questions that arise with regard to God's providence. It is designed to look at the question of providence, not only from a doctrinal viewpoint, but chiefly from an examination of concrete experiences of the flesh-and-blood people whose lives and struggles are recorded for us in sacred Scripture.
One of those people was King David.
Bowing Before God's Providence
David was stricken, assaulted in his conscience by the searing words of the prophet Nathan. Those words echoed in his ears and pierced his soul: "YOU ARE THE MAN." What had begun as a report of egregious wrongdoing by a subject in his kingdom was suddenly turned on the king himself. David thought he was hearing an account of selfish exploitation by an unnamed perpetrator. He was unaware that he was listening to a thinly veiled parable of himself, a prophetic narrative aimed at the king's own conscience. It was a simple tale.
Then the LORD sent Nathan to David. And he came to him, and said to him: "There were two men in one city, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had exceedingly many flocks and herds. But the poor man had nothing, except one little ewe lamb which he had bought and nourished; and it grew up together with him and with his children. It ate of his own food and drank from his own cup and lay in his bosom; and it was like a daughter to him. And a traveler came to the rich man, who refused to take from his own flock and from his own herd to prepare one for the wayfaring man who had come to him; but he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him."
So David's anger was greatly aroused against the man, and he said to Nathan, "As the LORD lives, the man who has done this shall surely die! And he shall restore fourfold for the lamb, because he did this thing and because he had no pity."
Then Nathan said to David, "You are the man!" (2 Sam. 12:1-7)
A torrent of guilt swept over David. The parable hit home, striking his heart. His eyes were opened as he suddenly saw the truth about himself he had been so careful to conceal. This was David, the one who was known as a man after God's own heart. This was the champion of Israel, her greatest warrior. This was Israel's most illustrious king, the author of the psalms. He had ascended to the throne at the death of Saul, whom God had rejected as king over Israel.
David was the Lord's anointed one who was elevated after the mighty had fallen.
He rued the disgrace of Saul and chafed at the triumphalism of the Philistines who would publish the news in Gath and whose troubadours would gleefully sing, "O how the mighty have fallen."
Now David had joined the ranks of the fallen. His fall was great and is recorded for all posterity. He was a living Shakespearean-style hero marred by a fatal blemish, marked with an indelible scandal.
David's fall began with a simple thought, an inclination born of lust when he inadvertently spied a beautiful woman at her bath. He didn't start out with a scheme to commit adultery. He was not on the prowl for the first available paramour. One moment of lust had exploded into a compulsive passion. Then David threw righteousness to the wind and gambled his soul in exchange for illicit romance. He put his conscience on hold and hardened his own heart. The biblical record is as revealing of the heart of darkness that lurks in the chest of every man as it is terse: Then it happened one evening that David arose from his bed and walked on the roof of the king's house. And from the roof he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful to behold. So David sent and inquired about the woman. And someone said, "Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" Then David sent messengers, and took her; and she came to him, and he lay with her, for she was cleansed from her impurity; and she returned to her house. (2 Sam. 11:2-4) David took another man's wife. Like the rich man in Nathan's parable, David helped himself to the ewe lamb of one of his trusted soldiers. Uriah was married to Bathsheba. Yet while Uriah was serving David with loyalty, David was taking liberties with Uriah's wife. Bathsheba became pregnant, and the child in her
womb was not, indeed could not have been, fathered by Uriah.
Obviously panic seized David's heart. He plotted an elaborate scheme to cover up his sin. He decided to grant Uriah a furlough from battle, a respite from war so that he could return for a season to his home and to his wife. This way when the child would be born Uriah could be deceived into thinking that it was his.
David heaped the praise of hypocrisy upon Uriah, gave him a gift (obviously designed to soothe David's conscience), and sent him home.
But David underestimated Uriah's loyalty. Uriah was not willing to abandon his post or take advantage of the king's generosity. He was a soldier. No matter how great was his longing to be with his wife, he still felt constrained to give service to his king. Instead of returning home as David had planned . . .
Uriah slept at the door of the king's house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house. So when they told David, saying, "Uriah did not go down to his house," David said to Uriah, "Did you not come from a journey?
Why did you not go down to your house?"
And Uriah said to David, "The ark and Israel and Judah are dwelling in tents, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are encamped in the open fields.
Shall I then go to my house to eat and drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing."
Then David said to Uriah, "Wait here today also, and tomorrow I will let you depart." So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. Now when David called him, he ate and drank before him; and he made him drunk. And at evening he went out to lie on his bed with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house. (2 Sam. 11:9-13) David's scheme was thwarted. His desperate plan of cover-up was frustrated by the loyalty of the very man he had betrayed. At this point one might expect that David would have been awakened from his lustful slumber and would have been led to contrition. On the contrary! With growing desperation David added sin to sin and compounded his guilt with virtual murder. He wrote his general, Joab, a letter that would be revealed to all history by the secret operation of God the
Holy Spirit. No shredding machine was available to destroy this evidence and conceal it from public scrutiny. David stooped to the nadir of nefarious conduct by having Uriah himself carry the sealed letter to Joab. In his naive loyalty, Uriah had no idea that the missive he carried to the front contained his own death warrant: And he wrote in the letter, saying, "Set Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retreat from him, that he may be struck down and die." So it was, while Joab besieged the city, that he assigned Uriah to a place where he knew there were valiant men. Then the men of the city came out and fought with Joab.
And some of the people of the servants of David fell; and Uriah the Hittite died also. (2 Sam. 11:15-17) Later a messenger was sent by Joab from the scene of battle to inform David that Uriah had been slain. David thought he was safe, that his secret was hidden from the eyes of men, buried with the body of Uriah. Bathsheba also received the report and immediately went into mourning. But not for long. When David sent for her she went to his house, became his wife, and bore him a son. It seemed that no one would ever know that the child born to them was the son of adultery.
But the God of all providence had his eye upon David. The king's secret did not elude His gaze. What was hidden from human discernment was naked before Him. In classic understatement Scripture says: "But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD" (2 Sam. 11:27b).
It was that divine displeasure that prompted the visit of Nathan to David. Nathan was burdened with the weight of the truth of the matter. His task was onerous as he was sent by God to confront a king. That is dangerous business for a prophet, as the experiences of Elijah and John the Baptist well attest. Yet the response of David to prophetic judgment was quite unlike that of Ahab or Herod.
David heard the prophet's word and was broken by it. After the bold declaration that David was the man of the parable, God spoke His full indictment against David through the lips of the prophet Nathan: Then Nathan said to David, "You are the man! Thus says the LORD God of Israel:
I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your keeping, and gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if that had been too little, I also would have given you much more! Why have you despised the commandment of the LORD, to do evil in His sight? You have killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword; you have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the people of Ammon. Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.' Thus says the LORD: 'Behold, I will raise up adversity against you from your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, before the sun.'" (2 Sam. 12:7-11) In the indictment God rehearsed the blessings He had bestowed upon David. All that David had received he had received from the invisible hand of God's providence. The blessing of that providence was now to be followed by judgment. The hand of God was heavy upon David. Yet the hand was not so heavy that it did not hold grace as well as judgment. Even here the justice of God was being tempered by mercy. God could have invoked the death penalty on David. David's offenses were capital crimes in Israel.
The heart of David melted. His response was that of deep and genuine repentance. His was no attrition born of a fear of punishment; his was contrition, a true remorse for having offended God. In his epic psalm of repentance following this incident, David cried out, "Against You, You only, have I sinned and done this evil in Your sight" (Ps. 51:4). This statement must be taken as hyperbole as it is not strictly accurate. David did more than sin against God. He sinned against Uriah; he sinned against Bathsheba; he sinned against his own family; he sinned against the whole nation, betraying its confidence in him as king. Yet ultimately all sin is against God and, in ultimate terms, only against Him, though in a proximate sense it involved others.
To Nathan, David replied before he wrote his lengthy penitential psalm: "I have sinned against the LORD" (2 Sam. 12:13). David's confession of sin, his acknowledgment of his guilt without any attempts at self-justification, was
immediately met with the announcement of God's pardon: So David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD."
And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die. However, because by this deed you have given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also who is born to you shall surely die." (2 Sam. 12:13-14)
The Scope of God's Providence
God put away the sin of David. This meant that God was granting remission to David for his sins. But though the eternal guilt of David's sin was remitted he still received temporal punishment for his sin. Through Nathan God announced that the child of the adulterous union would be taken from David and Bathsheba.
What follows is a difficult verse to assimilate into our faith but one that bears heavily upon our understanding of the providence of God: Then Nathan departed to his house.
And the LORD struck the child that Uriah's wife bore to David, and it became ill. (2 Sam. 12:15) Scripture declares that the Lord struck the infant child of David with a mortal illness. This is a hard saying. It is commonplace in the church today to hear vain attempts by preachers to exonerate God from any involvement in human sickness and death. I heard one televangelist declare that God has nothing to do with disease and death. He assigned these human tragedies to the work of Satan.
Such sentiments do violence, not only to our understanding of the providence of God, but to our understanding of the whole character of God. Christianity is not a religion of dualism by which God and Satan are equal and opposite opposing
forces destined to fight an eternal struggle that must result in a tie. God is sovereign over His entire creation, including the subordinate domain of Satan.
God is Lord of death as well as life. He rules over pain and disease as sovereignly as He rules over prosperity.
If God had nothing to do with sickness or death, Christians, of all people, would be the most to be pitied. It would mean living in a universe ruled by chaos where our Father's hand was tied by fate and bound by the fickleness of chance. His arm would not be mighty to save; it would be impotent. But, the preachers to the contrary, God has everything to do with sickness and death. God majors in suffering. The way of redemption is the Via Dolorosa, the road to the cross. Our Lord was Himself a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. No, God is not removed from or aloof from human suffering; it is contained within the scope of His providence. Our family understood that truth when Sherrie and her husband lost their baby.
And David also understood these things, as is seen by the subsequent narrative: David therefore pleaded with God for the child, and David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground. So the elders of his house arose and went to him, to raise him up from the ground. But he would not, nor did he eat food with them. Then on the seventh day it came to pass that the child died. And the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead. For they said, "Indeed, while the child was alive, we spoke to him, and he would not heed our voice. How can we tell him that the child is dead? He may do some harm!"
When David saw that his servants were whispering, David perceived that the child was dead. Therefore David said to his servants, "Is the child dead?"
And they said, "He is dead."
So David arose from the ground, washed and anointed himself, and changed his clothes; and he went into the house of the LORD and worshiped. Then he went to his own house; and when he requested, they set food before him, and he ate.
Then his servants said to him, "What is this that you have done? You fasted and wept for the child while he was alive, but when the child died, you arose and ate
food."
And he said, "While the child was alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, 'Who can tell whether the LORD will be gracious to me, that the child may live?' But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me." (2 Sam. 12:16-23) For seven days David wrestled with God. He prayed and fasted and refused to be comforted. His servants were deeply concerned that their king would do harm to himself. They pled with David to give it up, to eat and care for himself. When the child died they were terrified to report it to David. But David was astute.
He deduced from their whispers that the child had perished. Then, when he elicited the truth from them, he did something that amazed the servants. David got up, washed, anointed himself, and went to the house of God to worship Him.
Here we encounter the David who was a man after God's own heart. Here the character that resonates throughout the psalms makes himself clear. When God said no to the pleas of David, he immediately went to church—not to whine or complain but to worship. Here we see David living coram Deo, before the face of God. David pled his case before the throne of the Almighty—and lost. Yet he was willing to bow before the providence of God, to let God be God.
Such acquiescence before the providence of God is difficult for the world to understand. David's servants failed to grasp it; they saw in their king a spiritual anomaly. His behavior made no sense to them. They sought to rebuke him for his topsy-turvy actions. They thought David should have been in mourning after the child had died, believing that was the time for sackcloth and ashes, not while the child was still alive.
When David explained himself to his servants he gave them a lesson in the doctrine of providence. Though David had clearly heard God's declaration that the child would die and he did not regard it as an idle threat, he was also aware of God's actions in the past when He had relented from promised judgments when the people turned to Him in repentance.
David explained his entreaties by saying, "Who can tell whether the LORD will be
gracious to me, that the child may live?" The phrase "who can tell?" is the key to understanding David's prolonged fast and importunate prayer. The "who can tell?" calls attention to the Deus absconditus, the "hidden God" whose secret counsel remains unknown to us. David had heard the words of the Deus revelatus, the "revealed" God, but held out hope that it was not the entire story.
When he discovered that God had not held any of His plan in reserve it was enough to satisfy his soul and submit to God's "no." In a sense David's struggle foreshadowed something of the agony of Christ in Gethsemane as Jesus wrestled with the revealed will of the Father, but in the final analysis was willing to drink of the cup to its fullest measure.
If we understand the providence of God and love the God of providence, we are able to worship Him with the sacrifice of praise He inherently deserves when things occur that bring pain, sorrow, and affliction into our lives. This understanding of providence is vital to all who would worship God. It is a worship of faith that is rooted in trust. David trusted God for his own future, and he trusted God for the future of his son. David realized he had not yet heard the rest of the story and that all the subsequent chapters would be written by God.