A Great King Falls Hard

Most of y’all have heard me talk about our cat, Luna. She’s a beautiful cat with significant emotional problems that she expresses with urine. In all the wrong places.

So, after my Haitian “grandson,” Wendy, visited us for a couple of days a few weeks ago, she expressed her emotional distress over having to share “her” bedroom with him by urinating on the living room couch. Three days in a row.

Thankfully, we don’t use that couch, and we keep sheets of plastic spread over it to protect against just this kind of problem, so there was no lasting damage.

Except, perhaps, for Luna, who now has been banished to her bedroom, which is the only place we feel confident where she won’t urinate inappropriately.

She gets multiple visits a day from both Annette and me, and Annette has been sleeping in there with her. And Luna has never seemed so content in our home as she has under these new arrangements.

But here’s the thing: I love having pets, and I’m particular to pets that don’t have to be in solitary confinement all the time. So, lately I’ve been making up for Luna’s absence by watching the pets channel on television.

It’s called The Pet Collective, and if you’re an animal lover, I’d advise caution, because it can be hard to tear yourself away from the brief videos they show.

One of the videos we watched this week gives me a good place from which to launch today’s installment in our series, “Sin, According to the Experts.”

In the video, two average-sized dogs are sitting side-by-side on a tile floor, probably in a kitchen. Lying on the floor in front of each dog is a treat. Offscreen, you can hear a human telling them to stay or wait or something like that.

And that’s just what both dogs do. They’re being very obedient, and that’s pretty neat, considering the temptation that lies before them both.

Suddenly, you can hear the human say, “OK,” or something like that, and both dogs move to get their treats.

Except that the one on the left side of the screen first goes for the treat in front of the OTHER dog, snarfing it up quicker that your mom might’ve vacuumed up a spider.

And then, while the second dog is still bewildered by the betrayal, the first dog eats his OWN treat. In less than a second, he’s had them both, and the other dog got nothing.

I don’t know whether there are levels of betrayal in the dog world, but if there are, this probably ranks even higher than the fake ball throw.

I believe THIS is how dogs become supervillains. Perhaps this video was the origin story for Dr. Dog, the evil canine kleptomaniac whose life of crime never quite makes up for the betrayal he felt sitting there in that kitchen so long ago.

Now, this isn’t a sermon about dogs — or cats, for that matter. But it IS a sermon about betrayal. And it IS a sermon about sin.

And what that first dog did when he ate the other dog’s treat is a lot like what the subject of our study today did to someone who’d trusted him, someone who was loyal to him, someone who loved him.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, we’ll be talking about King David today. He’s the first dog from that little video clip. And the friend he betrayed — in a much worse way than simply taking his treat — was Uriah the Hittite.

We see this tragic story in chapters 11 and 12 of 2 Samuel. Once again, this week, if you have your Bible with you today, it’ll be helpful for you to turn to the passage, since I won’t be able to go through it verse-by-verse in the time we have this morning.

Now, as you’re turning there, let me give you some context for what’s going on in Israel at this time. David has been crowned the second king of Israel.

Remember that they’d had a period of judges after the initial conquest of the Promised Land. And by the time of the last judge, the prophet Samuel, the people of Israel had become so corrupt that they’d rejected God as their king.

despite the fact that He’d led them, provided for them, protected them, and ruled over them better than any human king ever would do they didn’t want God to be in authority over them.

So, through Samuel, God warned the people what it was going to be like having a human king to rule over them. We see this in 1 Samuel, chapter 8, picking up in verse 11.

1 Samuel 8:11–18 NASB95

11 He said, “This will be the procedure of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and place them for himself in his chariots and among his horsemen and they will run before his chariots. 12 “He will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and of fifties, and some to do his plowing and to reap his harvest and to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 “He will also take your daughters for perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 “He will take the best of your fields and your vineyards and your olive groves and give them to his servants. 15 “He will take a tenth of your seed and of your vineyards and give to his officers and to his servants. 16 “He will also take your male servants and your female servants and your best young men and your donkeys and use them for his work. 17 “He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his servants. 18 “Then you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”

What’s the word that stands out in that passage, the word we hear over and over again in reference to what the king will do?

TAKE! The king will take your sons for war. He’ll take your daughters as servants. He’ll take your fields and give them to his servants. He’ll take your seed and give it to his officers. He’ll take your servants and use them to do his work. He’ll take your flocks, and YOU will become his servants.

Which is exactly the opposite of what God had done as Israel’s true king. He GAVE the people a name. He GAVE them a land of their own. He GAVE them victory over their enemies. He GAVE them manna to eat in the wilderness.

But Israel wanted a king like all the other nations, and God would give them the king they wanted. Their first king, Saul, LOOKED like a king. He was taller than everybody else. He literally stood out among the crowd.

But Saul turned out to be just as bad a king as God had said he would. And what’s worse, he turned from the Lord.

And so, God had Samuel anoint a new king, and this one was the shepherd boy, David, whom Scripture calls “a man after God’s own heart.”

So, that sounds promising, doesn’t it? Indeed, we see David CHASING after the heart of God in the psalms he wrote. He clearly loved and trusted God deeply, and God rewarded him with great military victories in his early years as king over Israel.

And it’s just after one of those military victories that we’ll pick up David’s story in chapter 11 of 2 Samuel. And we’ll immediately see a problem. Look at verse 1 of that chapter.

2 Samuel 11:1 NASB95

1 Then it happened in the spring, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel, and they destroyed the sons of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But David stayed at Jerusalem.

Now, Rabbah was the capital of the Kingdom of Ammon. It was located in what’s now Amman, Jordan. And the Ammonites were a continual problem for Israel back then. In fact, the passage we’re studying today is bookended by wars between the Ammonites and the Israelites.

And what we see here in verse 1 is that, even in today’s focus passage, the attention of King David’s armies was focused on Ammon.

So, springtime arrives, and the text tells us that it’s the time of year “when kings go out to battle.” So, what does David do?

Well, he doesn’t go out to battle. He SENDS his top general, Joab, into battle, while he stays home in Jerusalem. And that’s a problem, because it suggests that David is feeling a little bit cocky with all these victories he’s notched in his belt.

It was irresponsible and, perhaps even a dereliction of his duty to remain behind while his men fought.

Furthermore, we don’t see him consulting GOD before sending Joab, and that’s a change from his earlier ways, too.

Previously, we’re told that he “inquired of the Lord” about his battle plans. Here, we see him charging out on his own — or, rather sending OTHERS to charge out on THEIR own.

And so, we see David, flush with success, abounding with God’s blessings, making a couple of fatal errors.

In today’s study, I’ve found some great help from Chuck Swindoll’s book, David: A Man of Passion and Destiny. Listen to what Swindoll says about David’s situation.

“Our most difficult times are not when things are going hard. Hard times create dependent people. You don’t get proud when you’re dependent on God. Survival keeps you humble. Pride happens when everything is swinging in your direction. When you’ve just received that promotion, when you look back and you can see an almost spotless record in the last number of months or years, when you’re growing in prestige and fame and significance, that’s the time to watch out … especially if you’re unaccountable. … Our greatest battles don’t usually come when we’re working hard; they come when we have some leisure, when we’ve got time on our hands, when we’re bored.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), 2 Sa 11:1, quoting Swindoll.]

David certainly seems to have been bored in Jerusalem, which was obviously his own fault. And he also seems to be disconnected from God. Look at verse 2:

2 Samuel 11:2 NASB95

2 Now when evening came David arose from his bed and walked around on the roof of the king’s house, and from the roof he saw a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful in appearance.

As is so often the case in Scripture, this reference to David going onto the roof of his house “in the evening” is a bad sign.

In the Bible, physical darkness and blindness are often metaphors for SPIRITUAL darkness and blindness. And David here seems to be spiritually blind, even if his eyes are working just fine.

So, what does he do with them? He SEES a woman who “was very beautiful in appearance” bathing herself, probably in her own courtyard.

And that could very well have been the end of the matter. He’d seen her. He could have respected her privacy and gone back to bed.

Maybe he could’ve gotten up early the next morning and gone out to battle, where he SHOULD have been in the first place. But that’s not what happened. Look at verse 3.

2 Samuel 11:3 NASB95

3 So David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?”

What does the Bible tell us to do about sexual temptation? To flee from it! Instead, David takes another step TOWARD it. He’s seen the bear trap in the woods, and now he’s testing it with his foot to see how sensitive it is.

And then, he learns that this woman, Bathsheba, is the wife of Uriah the Hittite.

Now, Uriah was one of David’s 30 or so “mighty men.” These were men who were close to David and trusted by him to handle some of the most difficult missions in his army. They were King David’s Seal Team 6.

Uriah was a Hittite, probably a descendant of Noah’s grandson, Canaan, who’d been cursed by God because of the sin of Ham against his father, Noah. The Hittite empire was located northeast of Israel in what’s now Syria and western Turkey. So, Uriah was a foreigner in Israel.

But his name means “The Lord is Light.”

Now, all this suggests two things to us. First, that Uriah, though not a Jew, was a believer in Yahweh, the one true God. And second, that he was very loyal to King David.

And so, we might reasonably expect David to stop right there.

But by now, he’s fully committed to the sin in his heart. So, look what happens in verse 4:

2 Samuel 11:4 NASB95

4 David sent messengers and took her, and when she came to him, he lay with her; and when she had purified herself from her uncleanness, she returned to her house.

David had everything a king could want, including six wives. But he wasn’t content with what God had given him. He wanted the one thing that should have been off-limits to him. Very much like Adam in the Garden of Eden.

And now, he’s following Samson’s playbook. He saw Bathsheba, he desired her, and he took her. He coveted Uriah’s wife, and then he committed adultery with her.

And then, in verse 5, he hears from her the words that every adulterer must dread: “I’m pregnant.”

This would have been terrifying news to Bathsheba. A pregnancy when her husband could not have been the father would have been evidence that she’d committed adultery.

And the Mosaic Law was clear that the punishment for adultery was for the adulterers (the woman AND the man) be stoned to death. She needed help, and only King David could help her out of this mess.

And so, as it so often happens when we find ourselves in the pit of sin, David grabs a shovel and starts digging the hole even deeper.

We don’t have time to go through the whole thing this morning, so let me give you the Cliff’s Notes version. He calls Uriah back from battle with the hope that this man will sleep with his wife while he’s home.

But, instead, Uriah sleeps at the door of David’s house, which ruins David’s plan to make it look like Uriah is the father of Bathsheba’s child.

And I want you to see how Uriah responded when David asked why he didn’t spend the night in his own house. Look at verse 11:

2 Samuel 11:11 NASB95

11 Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in temporary shelters, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field. Shall I then go to my house to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife? By your life and the life of your soul, I will not do this thing.”

Uriah, this Hittite foreigner in Israel, is reminding DAVID — Israel’s king and a man who should have loved God more than he loved his own sin — about God’s covenant with Israel.

Uriah wouldn’t enjoy the comforts of his home and wife while the Ark of the Covenant was kept in a tent near the battle lines.

So, David tries again, this time getting Uriah drunk. But as Warren Wiersbe put it: “… Uriah drunk proved to be a better man than David sober …” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), 2 Sa 11:6, quoting Wiersbe.] He still would not go to his house.

And so, still trying to cover his own sin, David devises a plan to have Uriah killed in battle, sending orders to Joab to make it happen.

Now, he’s brought his top general into his sin. This pit he’s dug is now both deeper AND wider. So, Joab does what his king has ordered, and Uriah the Hittite is killed, along with other men of Israel, in a hopelessly phony attack against Rabbah’s strongest warriors.

And so, with his sin at risk of being exposed, in verse 27, David marries Bathsheba.

2 Samuel 11:27 NASB95

27 When the time of mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house and she became his wife; then she bore him a son. But the thing that David had done was evil in the sight of the Lord.

David already had six wives. He wasn’t marrying Bathsheba because he loved her. This was a further effort to cover up his sin. If they were married, he might be able to make it look like the child had been conceived after their marriage.

Whereas David’s sin with Bathsheba was a crime of passion, his sin against Uriah was a premeditated murder. And the sin of marrying her was a sin of power.

Do you see that word, “took,” there? In the Hebrew, the suggestion here is that this was a king abusing his royal power.

Whether she was ever a willing participant in any of these events, we’re meant to understand that David wasn’t giving her a choice in any of it.

He was doing just what God had warned the kings of Israel would do: He was taking what he wanted. And what he wanted when he married Bathsheba was to cover up his sins.

But when we try to cover our own sins, they fester. And just as a wound that’s allowed to fester can infect other parts of the body, sin that’s allowed to fester can spread, too.

David tried to cleanse his sin by covering it up. But none of the things he did was able to cleanse the sin.

Only David’s repentance — after being confronted by Nathan the prophet — could do that, and even then only by the grace of God through David’s faith in Him.

Now, we don’t have time this morning to talk about David’s repentance, though it’s important to note that he finally DID repent and that He received forgiveness from God when he did so.

It’s also important to note that, though God forgave David, He didn’t take away the consequences of David’s sin.

Four of his sons would eventually die directly or indirectly because of what he’d done with Bathsheba. And three of them would commit or attempt to commit sexual sins of their own.

Like I’ve been telling you throughout this series: apples and trees.

And just as David had betrayed and killed Uriah the Hittite, this foreigner who loved David and served him so well, David’s sons’ lives would be marked by betrayal and death.

The sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons. What he did, they did.

Now, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about David’s sin this morning, and that’s appropriate. As the early Church Father Augustine said, “David’s fall should put upon their guard all who have not fallen.”

But Augustine then added this: David’s fall should also “save from despair all those who HAVE fallen.”

And that’s because of God’s grace.

Listen, if God in His grace would forgive this covetous, adulterous murderer, then there’s no sin of yours too great for Him to forgive.

As the Apostle John put it:

1 John 1:9 NASB95

9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Confessing your sins means no longer trying to cover them up yourself. Confessing your sins means turning to God in repentance. It means agreeing with God that what He calls sin is sin.

David finally confessed his sins before God, and God forgave him. And so, you, too, can be forgiven.

And just like David, you can be saved from the penalty for your sins through faith in Him. For David, that meant faith in the promises and the goodness of God. For us, it means much the same thing.

Faith in God’s promise of LIFE for those who turn to Jesus in faith that He is who He said He is and that He’ll do what He said He’ll do.

Faith in the goodness of the God who sent His only Son to bear your sins and their just punishment so that you could be saved from the punishment you deserve for them.

Faith in God’s promise that all who trust in Jesus alone for their salvation will have eternal life — life the way it was always meant to be in the presence of and in fellowship with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And all of this, not because we deserve any of it, but because God is a God of great grace.

Your sins are great, and so are mine. But HIS grace is greater.

If you’ve never accepted God’s gracious gifts of salvation and forgiveness for your sins, won’t you do so today?

And if you’ve already followed Jesus in faith, but you have unconfessed sin this morning, then let me encourage you to come and lay it at the altar right now.

Forgiveness awaits. FREEDOM awaits. Grace awaits.