Lent 2 Midweek – Confession

March 4, 2026

2 Samuel 11:1-12:25

Tonight, we continue our Lenten midweek series on Confession and Absolution, focusing on the act of confessing our sins.

As you just heard, the story of David’s sin has a snowballing effect—lust, murder, and an attempt to conceal. It’s a remarkable yet common story. 

David allows lust to take hold of his heart as Bathsheba bathes on a nearby rooftop. One also has to wonder what made Bathsheba choose such a visible spot to bathe.

David takes Bathsheba for himself, lies with her, and gets her pregnant. Of course, she is a married woman. So, what should he do in this situation? He decides to have the loyal husband and soldier return from the battle, to come back and lie with his wife so the child will appear to be his. 

Oh, wait, did we mention that Uriah was a loyal soldier who wouldn’t do this while his brothers were still fighting in battle? Yeah, no, he won’t do that.

So, what is an adulterous king to do?

Use your influence, power, and position to send the husband to the front lines, where he will probably die, so no one will make a big deal about this affair to anyone. 

To top it all off, act as if this was the predictable outcome, that it was an expected outcome, and you’ve done nothing wrong.

Now, God sends the prophet Nathan into the story. He was David’s pastor and counselor. He has been observing this entire situation unfold, and like any faithful pastor, he must care for the sheep entrusted to him. This means he has to do the difficult work of calling David to repentance. This is a tough task, but it can also be a joyful one if David repents because then forgiveness is present for him. 

But part of the challenge here is this: how do you approach or engage a king, someone in power, a person in authority who acts as if they haven’t done anything wrong, and call them to repentance?

This isn’t just a pastoral challenge; it’s a challenge for any mother or father who needs to correct a child’s behavior, or a child who must confront a parent, a brother who needs to call a sister to repentance, or a friend who has become blind to their ways and actions.

And so, Nathan doesn’t just come out and say to David from the get-go, “Hey David, you sinned.”

No, he approaches the situation like a doctor treating a sick patient. Nathan understood that the cancer of David’s sin needed to be cut out and removed, but he kept the steel blade hidden beneath his robe; he concealed the instrument to remove the cancer until the right moment, and then he drove the steel blade scalpel into the open wound of sin so that David could feel the pain of his sin. 

And this is what I mean by all of this.

As I mentioned a moment ago, Nathan did not approach David and just tell him, “You sinned.”

Instead, Nathan knew David well, and through a story, an allegory, God’s law was revealed and preached to David. Nathan delivered his message so effectively that David became absorbed in the story and didn’t even realize he was the star in it until Nathan’s echoing words thundered, “You are the man!”

How often does this happen to you?

How often do you go through your day without noticing the sins that plague your heart? 

When this happens, you join David in suffering from what we call spiritual blindness, when a person either doesn’t see their sin or wants to acknowledge their trespasses.

As Jesus says to the Pharisees, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘we see, your guilt remains.’” (John 9:41)

Through God’s Word, the prophet Nathan, David’s pastor, leads him to see his sin, and now there is only one thing David can do with the sin, confess it.

And you can hear David’s confession for these sins in the words of Psalm 51, which we prayed tonight, David wrote,

Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your steadfast love; according to Your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight, so that You may be justified in Your words and blameless in Your judgment.

David was forgiven, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any earthly consequences for his sin. The child in Bathsheba’s womb would die. A terribly hard pill to swallow.

There are a few things we can learn tonight. First, whether a person is blindly sinning or outright ignoring God’s law, we must approach them with gentleness and humility, using the Word of God as Nathan did, so gently and winsomely, to guide them toward recognizing their sin and repenting. 

Not all situations are the same, nor is each person. So, build trust with one another so you can have honest conversations.

Secondly, be humble enough to accept correction, to have your eyes open to your trespasses, so you might confess your sin. As the Psalmist wrote,

For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.… I acknowledged my sin to You, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and You forgave the iniquity of my sin. (Psalm 32:3, 5)

God wants to forgive you, but you must recognize and confess your sin. Yes, there may be earthly consequences for your blindness and lack of faith that led you into this snowball of despair. But a lack of confession will only keep you from the heavenly presence of Christ.

As we learn in the book of Proverbs,

Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy. (Proverbs 28:13)

In the end, we are little Davids, conceived in sin, and often enough, becoming blind to the ways we hurt and harm the people God has placed into our lives to love and care for.

We must keep working to strengthen our relationships so we can have difficult conversations with each other and call one another to repentance, when necessary, in charity and love. 

But we also need to learn to be humble and vulnerable, to be open to God’s call to repentance, through the people He sends into our lives, because in confessing our sin, we exercise a faith of humility and dependence on our Father in heaven, we recognize that there is no sin that we can hide, and acknowledge that we require a change of heart.

In fact, David exercises his greatest strength as a King through the humility of confessing his sin with Bathsheba and against Uriah.

Your Savior Jesus Christ, David’s Son and Lord, also demonstrated the greatest act of humility by dying for your sin on the cross.

This Lenten season, when you need to be humbled, look to the cross, where Jesus died for you. Then exercise true strength by allowing yourself to be called to repentance, to confess your sin, and to rejoice in the gift of God’s mercy and forgiveness. +INJ+

Rev. Noah J. Rogness

Pastor, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church

Tomah, WI

Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Website: www.goodsheptomah.org

The Shepherd’s Voice Podcast: https://goodsheptomah.podbean.com/