The Fabulous Life of David

David and Bathsheba

2 Samuel 11/ July 30, 2006

Presented by Dr. Marty Baker

I want to speak today to people who struggle and wrestle with sin. I know there are some of you in this room that when you saw that drama unfold, you felt so exposed and so defeated and so crushed, and you just wanted to leave or something. I know that.

Some of you may not struggle with the sin portrayed in the drama, but there’s something else that you struggle with. Every one of us in this room struggles with something. Maybe there are words that come out of your mouth that just cut people — angry words or bitter words or sarcasm that just wounds somebody to the heart and after you said it you feel so bad.

Or maybe there’s a kind of an arrogant, judgmental spirit inside of you, and you see other people who are so loving. You think, "I’d like to be loving like that," but you wonder if you ever will.

Or maybe your life is caught up in a web of deception, and there has just been such a long series of untruth that you hardly know what truth is anymore. Or maybe there’s a kind of coldness in your heart towards God, and you don’t want it to be that way. You want to be alive and tender towards him, but there is sin that is wounding you.

There is nothing more serious and nothing that will damage you more than the brokenness and the separation from God that the Bible calls sin.

I want to talk about how it played out in the life of David. Over the last four weeks, we have been in a series called, The Fabulous Life of David. David was called a man after God’s own heart, but today’s story is not so fabulous. I am going to talk about the story of David’s adulterous affair with Bathsheba.

I am sure some of you, like me, wonder how in the world could David allow it to happen? You know, it’s one thing when somebody who brazenly rejects God sins in spectacular ways. There’s no big shock there. We see that happen all the time. It makes papers all the time. It makes papers every day. A lot of times it doesn’t even make papers because it’s just commonplace.

But this is David. He’d loved God his whole life. When he was just a little boy, and he would take care of the sheep, he experienced God’s shepherding care for him. The lion would come against him or a bear, and God was there. And when he was a little bit older there’s this giant, Goliath. Everybody else in Israel — the strongest, bravest men — ran in fear, but David didn’t.

He believed so strongly in God that he defied Goliath in the name of the living God. He experienced the power of God flowing through his life when he was young. He was so submitted to God that he honored Saul in a cave when he could have killed him and gotten out of the cave. He wouldn’t do it because he was so committed to obeying God.

He loved God so much that when the ark, which expressed the presence of God, went into Jerusalem David danced in worship with all his might. He loved God so much that he wrote psalm after psalm, poured out his heart, poured out his prayers. This is a man after God’s own heart.

And here in this episode of his life he is guilty of lust and coveting and deceit, and he becomes an adulterer and a murderer. The question is: How could it happen?

Now I want to turn the question around for a moment if you’ll let me, and pose it like this: who in this room is so certain that you are so much more spiritual than David that what happened to him could not happen to you? Who in this room is that spiritual?

I think this story brings us to a real hard truth that we don’t like to face or talk about, and that is — every one — is fallen and that we will wrestle with fallenness — all of us — until the day we die. It is a real serious struggle, and it’s your struggle and it’s my struggle.

In the church we so tempted to divide sin into two categories: the acceptable sins and the scandalous sins. But God doesn’t. God just sees sin. He’s just seen fallen people. Most of us underestimate our fallenness. I think that’s why Paul said this to the Church at Corinth,

1 Corinthians 10:12

So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall!

Paul is saying, "If you think that you don’t struggle with sin or fallenness anymore, you are the one that is the most vunerable." He is saying, “Beware of your fallenness.” We need to be reminded that there is no room for pride or complacency or judgmentalism here at the Creek. It is not our goal to allow only perfect people to walk through those doors.

Our goal is to reach the most fallen, junked-up, messed up, mixed-up, out-of-control sinners in the C.S.R.A. And if you look around this room, I think we’re doing a pretty good job!

Today’s story is the story of one such sinner. In this story, we will see four crossroads, four defining moments in life of David and hopefully we will learn something that will strengthen us in our journey.

Now the interesting part of this story is that David blew right past three of the crossroads. In fact, every time he veered off, things got worse. Let’s pick up the story in 1 Samuel 11.

2 Samuel 11:1-5

1 In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.

2 One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful,

3 and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?"

4 Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (She had purified herself from her uncleanness.) Then she went back home.

5 The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, "I am pregnant."

That’s the beginning of this story. Like I said, there are four crossroads. We see the first one in verse one.

Four crossroads that David faced

1. Spiritual Drift Factor

The first crossroads has to do with a spiritual drift factor. David came to a crossroads in verse one.

2 Samuel 11:1

1 In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army…. But David remained in Jerusalem.

Battles were fought in the spring of the year. But this particular year, David thought to himself, "I don’t want to go. I don’t have to go. Let them go without me." Now, this was part of what it meant to be a king. David had always gone with his men, but not this year. Some scholars think there is something significant going on with David that the writer is cueing us into. We can kind of read between the lines.

It was generally believed that he was about 50 years old or so at this time. He wasn’t an old man yet, but he wasn’t the golden boy anymore either. Women didn’t look at him the same way they used to. He started using Rogaine. He told himself he was going to work out a little more, get a jogging track installed around the palace. He didn’t tell anybody, but he had a little Metamucil added to the royal diet.

What did he want? David didn’t really know. He wanted to feel young. He wanted to feel alive. He wanted to feel vital. He was restless, and he was lonely, and he was a little bored. So he decided he would stay home.

But what he apparently did not do is he did not talk to God about this. There was a spiritual drift setting in. David’s spiritual life was stale. He did not trust God as much as he did in the past. He wondered if God really had his best interest in mind.

David really thought, “I am going to have to look out for myself. I am not convinced that God is going to meet my needs. What David should have done was spend time alone with God, but instead, he drifted.

I don’t know what was going on inside of David’s head. Maybe he was lonely or bored? Maybe he needed a new challenge? Maybe the fear of aging and death had crept into his life? Maybe he needed a deeper experience of God’s Spirit? Instead of going to God, he just drifts. He just stays home.

Let’s pause for a moment at this crossroads. Some of you are right here at this crossroads in your life. You are a little restless; You are a little bored. You are a little dangerous right now. Your motivation to obey and serve God is low and getting lower.

You’re not sure why, but there’s a drift factor in your life. I want you to know you’re at a dangerous point.

I want to ask you, "Will you take time to go to God and pour out your heart? Will you trust him with your life and embrace the fact that God has your best interest at heart?

Will you trust enough to say, "God, I’m a little lonely, and I’m in a little pain. Please help me. I am going to trust you with my life.” David does not pray that prayer. He just drifts. He gets up out of bed late one afternoon, and he sees a woman bathing on a roof. The text says she is very beautiful. Then notice verse three,

2 Samuel 11:3

3 and David sent someone to find out about her.

Mark that word, “sent”. This is a key word. Here David sends out for information about this woman. He has drifted now from temptation to action. He’s making plans. You may say, “What about Bathsheba? Isn’t it her fault too?”

But there’s nothing in the text that indicts her. Most likely, they collected water in rain barrels. They would bathe in the afternoon when the water was at it’s warmest. The men would be away.

David treats her as kind of an object in this story. There’s no mention of how she feels. There’s no mention of what she says or what is said to her. She’s just something to be used by David in this story. In verse three, we see the second crossroad. The first one is the drift factor. The second on is a spiritual warning light.

2. Spiritual Warning Light

2 Samuel 11:3

3 and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?"

Here we see a very subtle warning light go off. David is at a crossroads. He is given a spiritual warning light, a gentle reminder that he should not be with this woman. Notice the verse says, "the wife of Uriah the Hittite."

This is significant because in the Old Testament generally, when genealogies are given for people, they never mention somebody’s spouse. They might talk about someone’s ancestors, but not about a spouse. But here this servant does.

Most likely, the servant knows what is going on in David’s mind. He is bold. He says, "Isn’t this Bathsheba," he says, "the daughter of Eliam? And David, isn’t this Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite? The servant is saying, “David, this is somebody’s wife. This is somebody’s daughter. Be careful."

This is that crossroads where you have a little inner voice, a message of conscience or the words of a friend before you do wrong. Be careful, think. This is a little warning light at this crossroads.

And we have those in our day in a quite concrete way. When you come to a traffic light, there are generally three colors. Two of the colors are very straightforward. Red means stop. And green means go. Then there’s yellow. Yellow is the most interesting and ambiguous of the three colors.

It’s always interesting to watch how people respond when they see the color yellow in a light. I typically brake, go slow or stop. Patty, on the other hand, hits the accelerator and goes fast.

Back to the story. God sends David a warning signal. "Isn’t this Bathsheba? Isn’t this somebody’s daughter? Isn’t this somebody’s wife?"

If David were at a spiritually sensitive place with God, this statement would have stopped him in his tracks — this is someone’s wife; this is someone’s daughter. But thinking is the last thing David wants to do. He just hits the accelerator and floors it. He goes right through this crossroads.

Some of you are at this traffic light this morning. You are not just drifting. There is a specific temptation that has formed in your mind. Perhaps you haven’t crossed the line yet, but you are about to. God has brought you here today so that you could here this message. Will you stop and think about what the consequences will be if you cross the line?

Be honest this morning. It’s time to come clean. It’s time to get alone with God and go deep. No one is going to do this for you. You have to do it for yourself.

You get real clear on what it is you believe and value to the core of your being, and you live that out. This is real life.

Well, David just blows right past this crossroads. There’s this little warning light that goes off: This is somebody’s wife; this is somebody’s daughter. He just blows right on past.

Look at verse four with me:

2 Samuel 11:4

4 Then David sent messengers to get her.

There’s that word "sent" again. This time he’s not sending for information. He’s sending for the woman, and he uses his power to get what he wants.

Up to this point in the story, everything works the way that David plans: he sees, he wants, he inquires, he finds out, he sends for her, he sleeps with her, and then he sends her home. And then something happens that’s not in his script. Look at verse five.

2 Samuel 11:5

The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, "I am pregnant."

There’s that word again "sent," only this time David is the sendee not the sender. He hadn’t counted on this. And this always happens with sin.

Sin always sets in motion spiritually destructive forces that you cannot control no matter how in control you think you are.

David heads toward the next crossroads with his life spinning out of control. David was drifting spiritually, then he ignored the warning lights. Now there’s the crossroads after the fact, after you’ve sinned.

3. You’ve sinned, now what?

How do you respond after you’ve sinned when you become aware that you’ve done wrong, and the consequences start to unfold? At this point David could thrown himself to his knees. He could have confessed his sins to God and to Bathsheba, but no. He decides to go down a darker road. Notice the word “sent” in verse six.

2 Samuel 11:6

So David sent this word to Joab: "Send me Uriah the Hittite." And Joab sent him to David.

David is out of control.

2 Samuel 11:7-8

7 When Uriah came to him, David asked him how Joab was, how the soldiers were and how the war was going.

8 Then David said to Uriah, "Go down to your house and wash your feet."

" That was a euphemism that the Hebrews would use for sexual context, "Go home. Sleep with your wife."

2 Samuel 11:8-9

8b So Uriah left the palace, and a gift from the king was sent after him.

9 But Uriah slept at the entrance to the palace with all his master's servants and did not go down to his house.

When David heard that Uriah did not go home, he was frustrated and tried once again to cover up his sin. He get Uriah drunk, but at this point Uriah has more integrity drunk than David does sober. It’s ironic that Uriah the Hittite, is more faithful to God than David.

So how far is David willing to go? As far as he had to.

2 Samuel 11:14 -15

14 In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah.

15 In it he wrote, "Put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die."

David is willing to commit murder if he has to. Not in a moment of passion, this is calculated, cold-blooded murder. And he’s willing to draw in his military chief of staff as an accessory. And he’s gauged his man well because Joab agrees to do it.

Notice something else. If Joab is going to have Uriah killed, he can’t just send one man out. He’s got to put a whole division of Israelite troops in a place where there’s going to be heavy fighting and a larger number of people killed. He deliberately sacrifices large numbers of innocent men to be butchered so that Uriah will die.

David committed himself to a strategy of cover-up. Sin has two consequences.

The Consequences of Sin

· Repentance, confession and restitution

· Cover-up and more sin.

Always it leads one way or the other.

Now David is almost finished now. He’s just about got it covered up.

2 Samuel 11:27a

After the time of mourning was over, David had her brought to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son….

Now, David has done it. He’s gotten away with it and nobody would ever know.

David thought that the great danger of his life was that somebody might find out. But, of course, that wasn’t his greatest danger. His greatest danger was that no one would find out, and his soul would be utterly destroyed. That’s our greatest danger too.

Yes, our great danger is that nobody will find out, and we’ll just live in darkness.

But David has one more crossroad, thank God. This chapter ends by introducing one more character, a character that has not been mentioned all the way up until now.

Look at the end of verse 27.

2 Samuel 11:27b

… But the thing David had done displeased the LORD.

David covered this one up from just about everybody. He could scam the court, he could fool the army, he could kill Uriah, he could marry Bathsheba, he could adopt the baby, and he could con the whole nation.

But there is one who sees everything with utter moral clarity. And he will call us all into account. And his justice will not be evaded. And he will not be taken in by the cleverest cover-up. David’s fourth crossroads comes, and it involves the pronouncement of the judgment of God. This is his last chance.

4. Standing Accountable before God

2 Samuel 12:1

The LORD sent Nathan to David.

And you see that word "sent" one more time. That’s the last time you’ll see it in this story. The Lord is the last sender. David has been playing God with Bathsheba and Uriah and Joab and the army and all Israel. Now God sends the prophet Nathan to David.

When the prophet arrived, he told David a story about a rich man with a large number of lambs and there was a poor man with only one little lamb. That poor man nursed that lamb and treated like a child. The rich man came and took the poor man’s single lamb away.

When David heard this story, he was furious. He said, “The one who did this deserves to die.”

Is it interesting how we can get all fired up about somebody else’s sin and forget about our own.

Nathan looked at David in the eye and said, "You are the man, David. This is your sin. This is how far you have fallen. This is the depth to which you have descended. This is your heart. This is your story. You are the man."

I am sure that there was a moment of silence. I am sure that David was thinking, “I can take care of Nathan. No one will ever, ever know.” David stands at this crossroads — two roads before him.

Finally, David says, “I am the man. I have sinned against the Lord. David came clean.

I tell you all this because some of you are here today, and you need that same miracle in your heart. Maybe you don’t even know it. Maybe like David, you’ve sat through messages and thought about the fallenness of other people, but today, for whatever reason, you’re aware of the fallenness in your own heart and you haven’t lived with passion for God.

Will you say to God right now, "I’m the man. I’m the woman. It’s my story, God, not my spouse, not the person sitting next to me. It’s my story."

Will you forgive me? Will you make me clean? Say it: I am the woman. I am the man. Come Lord and forgive me.

Song: I am the Man sung by Todd Sturgell

Closing thoughts, reflection and prayer.

Let’s bow our heads for a moment. I want to give you a few moments to have as a time of confession just between you and God to stand at your own crossroads.

But for some of you, this is a very important moment. And there’s some area in your life, maybe it’s a kind of a small one, but it might get real large. Maybe it’s real large. And God has been trying to get through to you, but for whatever reason, it hasn’t happened.

God’s waiting for you right now to just come to him in humility and brokenness and say, "All right, God, I’m the man. I’m the woman," whatever the area is.

"I’m tired, God, of holding you off at arm’s length. I’m tired of having to walk with the kind of darkness or brokenness or guilt or cloud over me that I’ve been walking with. I just want to come home."

Don’t resist him anymore. Just tell him, "I’m the man. I’m the woman." Talk to God right now.

This message was inspired by the writings of John Ortberg.