Grace, mercy, and peace be multiplied to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let me begin by saying what an honor it is to be able to stand before you today and speak the Word of God to you as part of your 100th anniversary celebration. Returning to this church and having Dad at the organ and with the choir brings back lots of good memories, and in some ways it feels like coming home, especially seeing so many familiar faces that I haven't seen for a long time. I recall spending many Sundays in my youth up here in the chancel as an acolyte-back in the days when I had a little less height and a lot more hair. John Wyman and I kept track of who acolyted at the most services. As I recall, he won. I'm sure that my experiences here at the school and in the choir and with acolyting were a part of the way the Lord led me to become a pastor, and I am thankful for the part that Trinity played in that.

The theme you have chosen for June is "family." In today's Old Testament reading we unfortunately see a marriage and family situation gone terribly wrong. It all started one spring when King David decided not to do his kingly duty to go out with his army and defend his kingdom. God had given him many victories up to this point, and perhaps David had become complacent and overly secure. And so he stayed back at Jerusalem and took it easy. One evening when David was walking on the roof of his palace in the city, he looked down on one of the areas below and saw a beautiful woman bathing. He inquired as to who she was and found out that she was Bathsheba, the wife of a soldier named Uriah, who was away in battle where David should have been. But even knowing that she was married, his desire was such that he still sought for her. David committed adultery with the wife of Uriah. And she became pregnant.

We should learn from this how temptation often finds a foothold with us. It's precisely when we're failing to do what God has given us to do that we open ourselves up to letting sin come in and take its place. When we avoid the duties of our callings as parents and children, as husbands and wives, as workers and citizens, all sorts of ungodly things will try to fill that vacuum. Idle hands are the devil's workshop, and all that. Like David, so many of our own troubles can be traced back to our pursuing something other than the everyday stations in life God has called us to.

So what did David do? He had a brilliant idea. Call Uriah back from duty and give him some leave at home to be with his wife. Then the pregnancy would seem perfectly normal and no one would be the wiser. The problem was, Uriah was an honorable man. He wouldn't take for himself all the comforts of home when his fellow soldiers were out in battle sleeping in the open fields. So Uriah slept outside the king's house. Even the next night when David got him drunk, Uriah refused to go to his house. Even if he had, David's sin still would've remained and festered. So it is that our own solutions and manipulations don't solve the problem of sin. The more we try to cover it up, the more tangled the web becomes, and the deeper into the quicksand we sink.

Finally, David decided to see to it that Uriah would be killed. He sent word to Uriah's commander to put Uriah in the hottest part of the battle and to draw back from him in the fighting so that he would be struck down. And so it happened. Uriah died serving his king. After Bathsheba mourned for her husband, David took her as his wife.

You can see from all this how sin tends to compound itself and multiply. David's laziness led to lust to adultery to deceit to murder. Beware, then, of giving any room at all to sin. Once the camel gets it nose into the tent, it's hard to push the beast back out. David thought he had the situation under control. In fact his approval ratings probably went up as a result of all of this. After all, from the people's perspective, he had just taken in this bereaved widow, and to top it all off, now word comes that there is a new royal child on the way. But, even though everything seemed fine on a human level, the Old Testament reading reminds us, "the thing that David had done displeased the Lord." What counts is how things look in the eyes of God who sees your heart.

Because of what David had done, God sent Nathan the prophet to him to confront him. And that is where we begin to see the good news a little bit in this narrative. Despite David's sin, God didn't give up on him. He loved him enough to send someone to tell him the hard truth and to call him to repentance, that he might be restored to God again. So it is also with you. Despite the things that exist in your past, and maybe even in your present, God doesn't give up on you. One of the signs of his love for you is that He sends people to you to tell you the hard truth about yourself- whether it's your pastor who calls you to repentance or a fellow Christian-so that you might be forgiven and reconciled to God. The Lord doesn't quit on you; His mercy toward you is a stubborn mercy. Just as the name "Nathan" means "gift," so also we should receive such people in our lives as gifts of God sent for our good.

Nathan told David a story about a rich man who took a poor man's only sheep and killed it to have a feast with a traveler who had come to him. David, the former shepherd, became enraged when he heard about this and said that the man who did that deserved to die, because he had no pity. Nathan then told David, "You are the man!" King David had done the very same thing and much worse in stealing away the wife of poor Uriah and then murdering Uriah with the sword of Israel's enemies. "You are the man!" The words cut David to the heart, and He penitently confessed, "I have sinned against the Lord."

Nathan's message comes to us today just as directly: "You are the man!" You are the one who deserves to die-whether it's for sins like David committed, or whether it's for the opposite sin of pride, that self-satisfied feeling that boasts that you haven't committed flagrant sins like David, only supposedly "minor" ones, that you've lived a pretty clean life and that God is pleased with you on the basis of your own works and efforts. Such self-justification is just as damnable as immorality. The Law says to us all, "You are the one!" and calls us to join in the penitent words David prayed in Psalm 51, "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin."

And the good news is, the Lord does. He is gracious and merciful and abounding in steadfast love for you. But the way that He is merciful toward you is not that He simply looks the other way. The holy God does not just sweep things under the rug. He deals with sin fully and completely. His mercy toward you, then, consists in this: He takes the judgment you had coming and transfers that punishment to His own Son. The Father says to Christ on the cross, "You are the man!" Jesus was the one held guilty of all people's sin, so that we may go free. Even as the innocent Jesus was condemned by Pontius Pilate while the guilty Barabbas was released, so Jesus has traded places with you so that you would be declared, "Not guilty." Your sin is His. His holiness is yours. This blessed swap is what St. Paul spoke of in II Corinthians, "God (the Father) made (Jesus) who knew no sin to be sin for us, that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." Christ was treated as if He were the adulterer, the homosexual, the murderer, the greedy, the prideful, the self-righteous, so that you would be treated as holy and beloved children of God.

Jesus is the Man. At Calvary Jesus made Himself the one who deserved to die so that you might live. He literally experienced hell in all its fury so that you would experience heaven in all its glory. He suffered your sin to death in His body, and He rose again to give you new and eternal life. There is no punishment of God hanging over your head any longer. The sentence has been served, and it is finished. Believe it. It's true! It is written, "There is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for (us) all."

That ransoming, redeeming forgiveness is what Nathan spoke to David after his confession. Nathan said, "The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die." This was the whole goal and purpose of Nathan's confrontation, that David might come to penitently receive God's forgiveness and be reclaimed. The judgment of the Law is spoken so that the mercy of the Gospel might be applied and believed. That's what your pastor is still given to do today: to speak sometimes harsh words of Law that reveal your sin, not simply so that you might try harder to be a better person, but so that you might hear and rely on the better Word, the Gospel of Christ crucified, and be saved. You heard that better Word at the beginning of today's service. After taking your place with David in the confession of sin, your pastor absolved and forgave you in the stead and by the command of Christ. Jesus speaks that Gospel word again to you right now. He says to you: "Your sin has been taken away by My holy, cleansing blood. You are not going to die eternally. For I give you My own life. Just as I conquered death Easter morning, so also you will be bodily raised from the dead when I come again on the Last Day. You are My own. I'm not turning away from you."

This story of David is given by God, then, both for your instruction and for your comfort. For in David we see someone who's not a perfect saint, but a person who has significant flaws and failings. If God can save someone like David, certainly He can also save and restore someone like you and me. Just like David, we may still have to deal with some of the earthly consequences of what we've done or left undone. But our forgiveness in Christ is sure and certain.

In fact God chose to redeem you using David as one of His instruments. For when the eternal Son of God became man in Christ, He did so as a descendant of David. God promised David that one of his sons would sit on the throne as king forever. And that promise is fulfilled in Jesus, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who is reigning even now over all things for your ultimate good.
To this day in the communion liturgy we sing words based on what was said to Jesus on Palm Sunday, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest!"

Jesus does indeed come to you in the Sacrament of the Altar that you may know His enduring mercy concretely and tangibly. He gives you to eat and drink His true and literal body and blood, that your consciences may be cleansed by the power of His forgiving presence. Jesus is the Groom, the real Man, who is faithful to His elect Lady, the church. He laid down His life for her, and now He gives out His life to her under bread and wine. Jesus says to you like He said to the woman in the Gospel, "Your faith in Me has saved you. Go in peace." In response to this unmerited goodness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, we say to Him, "You are the Man. You are the One for me. You're my Savior and Lord."

May it be that, if the Last Day hasn't come yet another 100 years from now, Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in Delray Beach, Florida will still be proclaiming this faithfulness and mercy of Jesus Christ. To Him with the Father and the Holy Spirit belongs all worship, honor, thanksgiving, and praise, now and forever. Amen.