You are the man

“David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.’
“Then Nathan said to David, ‘You are the man! ...’” 2 Samuel 12:5-7
In 2 Samuel 12 we have the record of how the prophet Nathan confronted David concerning his sin with Bathsheba. He told a parable of a poor man who had a single lamb, and a rich man who had many lambs. One day the rich man was hosting a visitor, but instead of taking one of his own lambs to serve his visitor a meal, he took the lamb belonging to the poor man. David was furious, but Nathan then pointed out that David was the rich man in the parable. He had many wives, but despite all this he took the wife of Uriah.
David pronounces the death penalty on the rich man who took the lamb. However, the Law of Moses already specified what the punishment for this crime was, and it was not death. It was (as David said in v6) to pay back four sheep (Ex. 22:1). However, David had committed adultery and murder, both of which were punishable by death (Ex. 21:14, Lev. 20:10). Thus he pronounces judgement on himself correctly.
David was furious at the arrogance of the rich man Nathan was telling him about, and was filled with compassion for the poor man, yet he never stopped to think about how his own actions would have affected Uriah. He knew that Bathsheba was Uriah’s wife, and yet he still went ahead with what he did (2 Sam. 11:3). Uriah was not unknown to him – he was listed among his best soldiers (2 Sam. 23:39).
Here’s the lesson for us: it is very easy to judge sins in other people, when we are guilty of the same thing. No wonder Jesus said that we need to remove the plank in our own eye before attempting to remove the speck in someone else’s (Matt. 7:3-5).