Bathsheba: Waiting on a Better King
Notes
Transcript
Matthew 1:6; 2 Samuel 11–12
Good morning.
It really is a gift to be gathered with the people of God on the Sunday before Christmas, so thank you for being here.
Throughout this Advent season, we’ve been preparing our hearts by slowing down and paying attention to the first chapter in the new testament—the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew chapter 1. Each week, we’ve listened to the stories of the women named there and discovered that the line leading to Christ is marked not by perfection, but by grace.
We’ve seen how God brings hope to the forgotten, as He did with Tamar—who was mistreated, overlooked, and denied justice, yet never unseen by God.
We’ve witnessed grace for the outcast in Rahab, a woman with a past, whose faith welcomed her into God’s family and gave her a new future.
And we’ve been reminded through Ruth that God delights to work through ordinary faithfulness, redeeming love and loyalty to bring restoration and blessing.
Together, these stories have taught us this:
God works through messy lives, unexpected people, and quiet faithfulness to bring about His saving purposes—and ultimately, it’s in the midst of mess that God chose to bring forth the Redeemer.
And I love that.
I can step into each of those stories and see God’s grace at work. But I’ll be honest—today’s story is the one I struggle with the most.
When I was mapping out this series, I wrestled with where to place it. Following the natural order of the text meant that the story of Bathsheba landed here—on the Sunday before Christmas. And I’ll admit, I was tempted to rearrange it. Nobody wants to deal with this kind of mess at Christmas.
But that hesitation revealed something in me. In that moment, I realized I was missing the point of Christmas entirely.
Christmas exists because of mess.
Because of brokenness.
Because the world was not something we could clean up on our own.
As difficult as this story is, the story of Bathsheba gives us one of the darkest backdrops in the genealogy of Jesus—and it’s precisely that darkness that makes the light of Christ shine all the brighter.
Christmas doesn’t arrive in a polished story.
It enters a broken one.
And that’s where we turn now:
To a story that begins with a text that feels almost harmless, until you realize how much weight it carries:
“In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle…”
(2 Samuel 11:1)
That sentence tells us what is normal. It tells us where David belongs: out in front, leading, protecting, fighting alongside his people.
But the verse keeps going, and it tells us something is already wrong.
Because, David remained at Jerusalem.
The king stays home.
The army goes without him.
David, who as a young boy slayed lions and giants, has become a man unwilling to lean into what God had called him too.
Recently I’ve been talking to some of my football boys about next season. We had a really great year this last year, going 5-1 after going 0-6 in our first year as a program. And so in talking to the boys who are coming back next year, I can hear them trying to explain something to me that they can’t fully put into words. When they talk about next season, they feel a weight, a responsibility that they didn’t feel before… what they’re feeling, is pressure.
And I share a phrase with them, that they are going continue to hear me say at least 500 times between now and next season, it might even end up on a team t-shirt:
“Pressure is a Privilege”
A father who feels pressure, is a man who people count on. He feels pressure because he has a wife and children, and they depend on him to provide for and protect them.
A woman who feels pressure in her work, only feels that pressure because she’s been given responsibility, and real people depend on her accomplish what has been put on her shoulders.
Pressure is privilege. To live a life free of pressure, is to be someone that nobody is counting on and nobody depends on.
For the Christian, pressure is a part of life. Not pressure to do the work of God, but pressure to be obedient to what He has called us to, to be faithful in what He has put before us.
And David was in a season of his life where he felt enormous pressure…but he didn’t yet see it as privilege.
And so one evening, restless and unguarded, David walks on the roof of his palace.
From that high place, he looks down.
And he sees a woman bathing.
Scripture doesn’t linger, but it tells us enough:
“The woman was very beautiful.”
(2 Samuel 11:2)
A momentary glance becomes a deliberate gaze. And what begins with looking , turns to action. David sends someone to find out who she is.
I think it’s worth considering the implications of where David finds himself, because I would contend that most people can relate to this moment.
I don’t know if David went to the roof with ill intent, but he found it.
His eye wandered toward that which it wasn’t meant to see, and he lusted.
And in that moment, he had a choice, there is still time to stop. Still the opportunity to turn back.
And this opportunity increases as his messenger asks him:
“Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?”
(2 Samuel 11:3)
The word that comes back to David only reinforces the reality that he should run from the temptation that has taken hold of him.
For this woman is not anonymous. She is known. She belongs to a family. She is bound by covenant to another man—Uriah, one of David’s own mighty warriors, currently risking his life on the battlefield in the name of King David.
And yet, knowing all of that, David sends messengers anyway.
The Bible records the moment without commentary or excuse:
“So David sent messengers and took her… and he lay with her.”
(2 Samuel 11:4)
No romance.
No justification.
Just power, exercised without restraint.
Some people read this story and try to make Bathsheba equally culpable…but personally, I think that view is ridiculous. THIS WAS THE KING…he didn’t make requests, he gave orders, she was in no position to refuse him and he knew it.
The king took what did not belong to him, and the text offers no commentary—only silence.
And that silence forces us to sit with the weight of what has happened. Scripture doesn’t rush us past it. It doesn’t explain it away. It simply lets the act stand, exposed and heavy.
And it’s worth pausing here to notice something.
David’s heart has given itself over to wickedness—there’s no way around that, and there’s no minimizing it. This is sin, and it is grievous. But when we pay attention to how stories like this unfold, we often notice that full-blown wickedness rarely appears out of nowhere. It grows. It takes root. And very often, it begins not with a dramatic fall, but with a quiet retreat.
This story did not begin on the rooftop.
It began with David avoiding the battlefield.
The text tells us this happened “at the time when kings go out to battle.” In other words, David stepped away from the very place where God had called him to be faithful. He removed himself from the pressure, the responsibility, the danger—the place where obedience was required.
And that pattern feels far too familiar:
So often, the stories we hear of sin that hardens into destruction begin the same way. Not with an explosion, but with disengagement.
It starts on a computer at 11 a.m. when a dude should be at work—or at 11 p.m. when exhaustion should have already overtaken him after a day of being faithful to duty.
It starts with a conversation that takes place sinfully, while a hundred opportunities to have gospel conversations with people God placed in our lives were avoided.
It starts when we choose comfort over calling, ease over obedience, distance over faithfulness.
The fall rarely happens in the moment of temptation alone.
It begins when we quietly step away from where we’re supposed to be.
David shouldn’t have been on the rooftop to begin with.
He should have been on the battlefield with his brothers.
Not because battle would have made his heart healthy—but because obedience matters.
Because when we abandon our God-given responsibilities, we leave ourselves exposed.
I once heard it said that “a man is a lot like an old pickup truck, he runs straighter when he has some weight in the bed.”
And a similiar sentiment was spoken by David’s son Solomon:
A worthless man plots evil,
and his speech is like a scorching fire.
The new living translation gets to the heart of that proverb translating it “idle hands are the devil’s worship”
There is no excuse for David’s sin, but there is a warning here for us:
Sin often doesn’t announce itself. It waits until we’re alone, unaccountable, and far from the places where faithfulness is formed. When we forsake the work God has called us to do, we often begin to nurture the desires of our heart, and many of those desires are intended to be killed, not nurtured.
This is why this story refuses to romanticize the moment—because Scripture wants us to see how easily hearts drift, and how costly that drift can become.
Following this heinous abuse of power, comes the message that changes everything, Bathsheba reports back to the King:
“I am pregnant.”
(2 Samuel 11:5)
Like thousands of corrupt politicians and leaders that would come after him, David’s response to this news is not confession, but control. He begins to manage the situation—to hide it, to fix it, to make it disappear.
He summons Uriah home from war, hoping that he will go to his wife and unknowingly cover the king’s sin.
But Uriah will not.
While David eats and drinks in comfort, Uriah sleeps on the ground. And when David questions him, Uriah says words that cut to the heart:
Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths, 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? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing.”
Notice the contrast in heart here:
Uriah says essentially “both God’s presence and His people are out in the field laying down their lives…I am not gonna go home and put on pj pants.”
Uriah is loyal.
Uriah is honorable.
Uriah sees pressure as privilege.
The soldier acts is braver, and has more integrity than Israel’s king.
And Uriah’s integrity only served to convict and enrage David….but he still won’t repent, instead he escalates his desire to control the situation.
He writes a letter, seals it, and places it in Uriah’s own hands. Uriah carries his death sentence back to the battlefield.
And the command is chilling:
In the letter he wrote, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, that he may be struck down, and die.”
Uriah is abandoned.
He is struck down.
He dies without knowing why.
Recently, I was gathered with a group of men and through conversation, they discovered that they all shared a common store of having a broken relationship with their fathers. In each case, the strain had been caused by their father’s sin, sin that had broken up their families.
And as each man shared more of his story with the others…I was struck deeply by one common theme in each story.
The reason the grief was so deep for each son…was because each father refused to simply say “I’m sorry.”
He would go to great lengths to try to fix the problem, he’d do anything but own his sin and repent of it.
David, is willing to sentence a man to death rather than just apologize, and own his sin.
And so a husband dies, Bathsheba mourns. And when the period of mourning is over, we are told:
And when the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son.
A quick reading of 2 Samuel can almost make this feel like a resolution.
A wedding.
A child on the way.
From the outside, it looks like the story has been tied up neatly, like David’s plan to sweep sin under the rug worked.
But the chapter ends with a sentence that refuses to let the story close:
“But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.”
That word—displeased—doesn’t mean God was mildly annoyed or momentarily frustrated. It means that David’s actions stood in direct opposition to His character.
What David did violated everything God loves: covenant faithfulness, justice, protection of the vulnerable, and the sanctity of life.
God is not displeased because His reputation was threatened.
He is displeased because people were harmed.
God saw Bathsheba when no one else did. He saw a woman whose life was upended by the misuse of royal power. He saw her grief—the loss of her husband, the loss of agency, the loss of security. The God who hears the cry of the oppressed does not overlook her story simply because the king has moved her into the palace.
And God saw Uriah. He saw the faithfulness that went unrewarded. He saw the loyalty that was repaid with betrayal. God’s displeasure rises not from broken rules alone, but from broken trust and broken lives.
And this sentence reminds us that God is not fooled by appearances.
A wedding cannot baptize injustice.
Time cannot sanctify abuse.
And power cannot redefine right and wrong.
What looks resolved to us is still unresolved before God.
There is mercy packed into this sentence. It tells us that God has not abandoned the story. He has not forgotten Bathsheba. He has not surrendered justice to power.
The Lord is displeased because He loves—because He defends the vulnerable, confronts the guilty, and refuses to let sin be the final word.
And so God sends a prophet:
And the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.” Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.”
Like every human, David is appalled at the sin of another, and is totally blind to the fact that he is the same.
Thus, Nathan says four bold words that stop him in his tracks:
Nathan said to David, “You are the man!
By God’s grace, those four little words cause David’s defenses to fall. T
He stops trying to control everything, stops pretending, and he says:
David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die.
The Bible is full of stories of people who were destroyed by their sin—and our world is no different.
David’s story isn’t different because of his goodness, his wisdom, or his power. David’s story is different because he repented.
And because David is such a prominent figure in Scripture, we can be tempted to rush past his failures and celebrate his victories. But that is not the intent of the text. Scripture refuses to let us sanitize this story. We are meant to feel the weight of David’s sin, to see the depth of his wickedness, and to understand what unchecked desire and power can do to a human heart.
Because only when we take David’s failure seriously can we take God’s grace seriously too.
Perhaps one of the most famous psalms in all of Scripture is Psalm 51, a psalm written by David as a way to journal his repentance after this very moment.
It’s striking what David does not do in this psalm. He doesn’t defend himself. He doesn’t blame circumstances. He doesn’t appeal to his accomplishments. Instead, he begins with mercy:
“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love.” (Psalm 51:1)
David owns the weight of what he’s done:
“For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.” (v. 3)
He names the deepest problem—not the consequences, but his heart:
“Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity.” (v. 5)
And then he asks for something only God can do:
“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” (v. 10)
David understands that forgiveness is not enough if transformation doesn’t follow. What God desires, David says, is not performance or sacrifice, but honesty:
“A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (v. 17)
Psalm 51 shows us that repentance is not simply feeling bad—it is bringing our sin fully into the light and placing ourselves completely at the mercy of God.
Because forgiveness is real.
And God’s mercy is great.
Now forgiveness does not mean the absence of consequence.
The child born from this union dies. Grief enters the house. The ripple effects of sin remain and David will deal with them for the rest of his life.
But, because of God’s mercy, even this darkness will serve to reveal the Light.
For in time, Bathsheba conceives again.
she bore a son, and he called his name Solomon. And the Lord loved him
Out of what was broken, God brings life.
Out of what was marred by sin, God chooses to continue His promise.
And generations later, when Matthew tells the story of Jesus’ family tree, he will not hide this broken moment.
He will not reframe it.
He will not clean it up.
He will remind us that the Savior of the world comes from a story like this—because grace does not deny the truth.
It redeems it.
and Jesse the father of David the king.
And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah,
That title is intended to pack a punch.
Notice it’s unique only to Bathsheba, everyone else is called by their name.
And certainly, Matthew could have called her “Bathsheba, the wife of David.”
Because the truth is, she was married to David far way longer than she had ever been married to Uriah.
But Matthew doesn’t do that.
Instead, in Matthew 1:6, he calls her “the wife of Uriah.”
And by naming her that way, Matthew refuses to let us tell a cleaned-up version of the story. He keeps the wound visible. He reminds us that behind the glory of Israel’s greatest king is a grave injustice—an abused woman, a abuse of power, and a man who never got to come home.
Can I ask you something—would we be so bold to do that in the local church?
How often has the church tried to erase its broken history? How often have we shoved skeletons into the closet, hoping time, silence, or good intentions would make them disappear? Friends, we have been guilty of that sin for far too long.
But Matthew’s bold words in the genealogy of Jesus offer us a better way.
Matthew doesn’t hide the past—he names it. He tells the truth, not to shame God’s people, but to magnify God’s grace. And in doing so, he reminds us of who we are meant to be. We are not a people who hide sin; we are a people who bring it into the light. We are not a people who protect appearances; we are a people who pursue healing. We are not a people defined by a flawless past, but by a faithful Savior.
The good news is this: telling the truth is not a threat to the church—it’s the beginning of renewal. Confession doesn’t weaken our witness; it strengthens it. When the church tells the truth about its failures, it creates space for repentance, restoration, and real hope.
Because the same grace that carried a broken genealogy all the way to Jesus is the grace that still carries His church today.
By calling her “the wife of Uriah” Matthew does at least three things.
First, he names the sin without excuse.
David is not remembered here primarily as a great king…but as a man deeply in need of a Better King.
Second, he restores the dignity of the forgotten.
Uriah was loyal, faithful, and righteous—and he was murdered. History often forgets people like him. Matthew does not. By naming Bathsheba in connection to Uriah, Scripture honors the man who was wronged and refuses to let him be erased. Time had likely forgotten his faithfulness…but God didn’t.
And third, he magnifies the grace of God.
Bathsheba was taken advantage of by a wicked king, but a greater King would come to avenge her. In fact, God looked upon this beloved woman, and He chose her to be the one through whom the Savior would be born. Jesus, the Savior and Son of the abused.
The story of Christ’s bloodline would not be a polished story of heroes and halos, but a broken family tree marked by sin, loss, and grief.
And yet God does not abandon the story. He redeems it, and He is redeeming it still!
Closing:
Closing:
As we close this morning, I want to share another Psalm with you.
Psalm 32 gives us another window into David’s repentance—but from the other side of repentance.
If Psalm 51 shows us the moment of brokenness, Psalm 32 shows us the freedom that follow honesty before God for it is believed that Psalm 32 is a response to receiving God’s mercy after the events of 2 Samuel 12.
David begins his song no longer crippled with guilt, but filled with blessing:
“Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” (Psalm 32:1)
But he doesn’t pretend the journey there was easy. He remembers what it was like to stay silent:
“When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.” (v. 3)
Unconfessed sin didn’t stay hidden—it hollowed him out. Day and night, David says, God’s hand was heavy upon him:
“My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.” (v. 4)
But then comes the turning point—the moment repentance becomes real:
“I acknowledged my sin to you… and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.” (v. 5)
When David surrendered to God, and recieved the mercy of God, notice how his view of God changed:
“You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble.” (v. 7)
God is certainly the light that exposes our sin, but make no mistake, Jesus is the means through which God has brought us into the light!
Psalm 32 reminds us that repentance is not about humiliation—it is about freedom. Silence leads to decay, but confession leads to joy.
David’s story is glorious not because he wasn’t wicked, but because he stopped hiding and brought his sin into the light for Jesus to pay for!
David’s acceptance, and all the ways God used Him, are not intended to make much of David….they are intended to reveal both the will of God to save the broken, and the power of God, to do mighty deeds through the most flawed of men.
Friend, wherever you find yourself, whomever you relate to in this story…God is for you.
He desires you.
And this Christmas, Jesus invites you into freedom.
So be known.
Step into the light.
Let God be your refuge.
Maybe today you feel like Bathsheba—taken advantage of, overlooked, uncared for, or wounded by the misuse of someone else’s power. If that’s you, hear this clearly: God sees you. He has never been indifferent to your pain. He does not rush past your story, and He does not ask you to pretend it didn’t happen. The God who named injustice in David’s life is the same God who draws near to the wounded and promises restoration.
Maybe you feel more like Uriah—faithful, obedient, trying to do all the right things, and still suffering loss you feel like you don’t deserve. If that’s you, know this: your faithfulness is not forgotten. God sees integrity even when the world rewards betrayal. Your story matters to Him, so much so, that God chose to honor Uriah’s legacy in the lineage of CHRIST!
Or maybe, if you’re honest, you see yourself in David—having made decisions you wish you could undo.
The good news of Christmas is not that you can fix yourself, but that repentance is met with mercy. A broken and contrite heart, God will not despise.
Put your pride to death this Christmas, listen to the voices of the Nathan’s in your life, repent…and let it go!
For Jesus steps into broken genealogies, wounded lives, and sinful histories—not to erase the truth, but to redeem it. And that same invitation stands before us today.
We are a people waiting on a Better King, and the good news of Christmas, is that He has come, and so we we will sing:
O come, all you unfaithful
Come, weak and unstable
Come, know you are not alone
O come, barren and waiting ones
Weary of praying, come
See what your God has done
