You Are the Man!

“Then Nathan said to David, ‘You are the man!'” (2 Samuel 12:7).

“You the man!”

When we hear that, in today’s jargon, that’s a compliment. It means, “Wow! You are really something. You are really great!” When someone says that about you, it’s almost a always a good thing.

Not so much in this context. When Nathan tells David, “You are the man!”, Nathan is confronting David about his sin of raping Bathsheba and murdering her husband Uriah. The person responsible for these horrendous deeds is none other than David.

The rest of the verse lays out the sentence. “Then Nathan said to David, ‘You are the man!’ This is what the LORD, the God of Israel,, says: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you all Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites” (2 Samuel 12:7-9).

“You are the man!”

Just as David was guilty of sin, so are we.

“You are the man!”

Yup. That includes you and me. We are all guilty. We are all deserving of God’s wrath and judgment.

“You are the man!”

Yup. No excuses.

BUT, “You are the man!”

You are the person Jesus died on the cross for.

“You are the man!”

You are the person God could not imagine spending an eternity without.

“You are the man!”

So Jesus died on the cross to die the death we deserve. And Jesus rose again from the dead to give us eternal life.

“You are the man!”

God loves you.