God had forgiven David’s sin, but had not exempted him from the consequences of his sin. The Prophet, Nathan, foretold the death of the son conceived through adultery and when the baby turned ill, David interceded for its life.
He wept and prayed. He fasted and laid on the floor. He refused to be comforted as he prayed for God to relent and release the innocent baby from the prophecy of Nathan. But God would not relent. David’s intercessory prayer for this baby is one of the most moving and passionate prayers in the Bible. No one wanted anything, or pleaded with God for anything, more than David did. But God said “NO”.
Ogilvie describes the lesson for us: “When the child died, David accepted it without complaint and went back to living. He washed, anointed himself, put on clean clothes, went to worship, and came home and ate (v. 20). All of us suffer loss in our lives, and we need to learn the lesson that David models in this story. Learning to turn loose of what we cannot change is one of the Christian’s most needful lessons. David’s lesson for us is that when we have done all we can and it’s out of our hands, we need to accept it as a fact and turn loose. This is how God frees us to go on living.”