We can no more bear to be told of our faults by God than man; and if we durst think it, are in reality as much disgusted by the one as the other. (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)
“The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).
This penetrating thought of Thomas Adam (above) can reveal a lot about our own hearts if we will take the time to think for a few moments on it. We know that we don’t like to be told bad things about ourselves whether they are true or not. We much prefer to go on deceived about ourselves rather than actually deal with our own hearts. It is painful to our pride and our self-love and horridly inflated self-esteem when someone points out something about us that is less than perfect. While Scripture speaks of a flattering tongue as working ruin and the wounds of a friend as being faithful, we will not listen to Scripture at that point and instead listen to our wounded pride. A person that speaks ill of us, even if it is in true kindness, is a person that we are disgusted by.
When Nathan the prophet confronted David with his sin concerning Bathsheba and Uriah, he pointed at him and said “you are the man.” David was immediately convicted of his sin and brought to a thorough and painful repentance. Something of his repentance is recorded in Psalm 51. In it David said that he had sinned against God and God alone, “So that You are justified when You speak And blameless when You judge.” In other words, whatever God did with David God was justified in doing so and David admitted that.
On the other hand, there are so many who hate to go to a church where sin is mentioned and hardly anyone is able to endure what they used to call “close preaching.” People want to have their itching ears tickled even more rather than have the Word of the living God spoken and the Spirit convict them with it. Behind or underneath all of this is that people have an exalted opinion of themselves and down deep they see themselves as good and perhaps as righteous. Then the truth pokes at those false bubbles it shakes people to their very foundations. When this happens, people are disgusted by those who tell them or show them that they are sinners. They are disgusted by people who do this or by the living God when His perfect and righteous standards are set forth.
II Samuel 12:9 ‘Why have you despised the word of the LORD by doing evil in His sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the sons of Ammon. 10 ‘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.’
In the II Samuel 12 passage Nathan spoke very strongly to David. He told him that he had despised the word of the LORD by doing evil in His sight. This is a very powerful passage when we break it down just a little. When a person does what is evil, that person despises the word of the LORD. The standard of evil, however, is not what man says about it, but what is evil in the sight of God. This is why human being must strive to know their own hearts and they must strive to discern and judge what is evil in accordance with what God says is evil. The Pharisees thought they were righteous because they practiced righteousness by their own standards, but the NT clearly shows that what they thought of as righteousness was actually wicked lawlessness by the standards of God.
The II Samuel 12 passage, however, goes just a bit deeper. Nathan tells David that not only had he despised the word of the LORD in doing the evil he had done, but he had actually despised God Himself (see v. 10). This is an aspect of sin that we don’t hear about very much. When people commit sin they despise the word of God and therefore God Himself. When others disgust us by their standards, if their standards are the standards of God then we are disgusted by God. Indeed our sin is so enormous that we cannot even begin to make the smallest dent in it. We desperately need a Savior who can save by grace alone and be moved out of love for God rather than us.
God Loves... Himself 
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