Sermon Tone Analysis

2 Samuel 11:1-27

Our Dirty Little Secret

 

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.”

Then David said to Uriah, “Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back.”

So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next.

And David invited him, and he ate in his presence and drank, so that he made him drunk.

And in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house.

In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah.

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.”

And as Joab was besieging the city, he assigned Uriah to the place where he knew there were valiant men.

And the men of the city came out and fought with Joab, and some of the servants of David among the people fell.

Uriah the Hittite also died.

Then Joab sent and told David all the news about the fighting.

And he instructed the messenger, “When you have finished telling all the news about the fighting to the king, then, if the king's anger rises, and if he says to you, ‘Why did you go so near the city to fight?

Did you not know that they would shoot from the wall?

Who killed Abimelech the son of Jerubbesheth?

Did not a woman cast an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died at Thebez?

Why did you go so near the wall?’ then you shall say, ‘Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.’”

So the messenger went and came and told David all that Joab had sent him to tell.

The messenger said to David, “The men gained an advantage over us and came out against us in the field, but we drove them back to the entrance of the gate.

Then the archers shot at your servants from the wall.

Some of the king's servants are dead, and your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.”

David said to the messenger, “Thus shall you say to Joab, ‘Do not let this matter trouble you, for the sword devours now one and now another.

Strengthen your attack against the city and overthrow it.’

And encourage him.”

When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she lamented over her husband.

And when the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son.

But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.[1]

January 22, 1973, is a day which will live long in infamy.

On that day, the learned justices who make up the Supreme Court of the United States of America found in the constitution of that great nation a right of a woman to murder her unborn child.

The learned justices, ruling in /Roe v. Wade/, found that a “right of privacy” earlier discovered was “broad enough to encompass” a right to abortion.

A state could only regulate abortion for the purpose of protection maternal “health.”

Issued on the same day, /Doe v. Bolton/ defined “health” to mean “all factors” that affect the woman, including “physical, emotional, psychological, [and] familial [health], and the woman’s age.”

In effect, a woman’s “right” to abortion was unchecked by judicial fiat.

The Supreme Court essentially decided that a woman “owned” her unborn child, much as a slave-owner once “owned” slaves.

Since the woman was the “owner” of the unborn child, she had a right enshrined in law either to keep or to dispose of that child.

Since that time, tens of millions of unborn children have been slaughtered in utero.

The churches of North America have roused themselves occasionally to condemn the ruling and to slam those women who choose to deal with their desperation through choosing to abortion over birth.

Each year, on the Sunday in January nearest the anniversary of that ruling, churches throughout North America observe a Sunday which has become known as Sanctity of Life Sunday to teach the congregations of the fundamental right to life.

Many Christians will form what are called “life-chains”—lines of people protesting the evil of abortion.

Multiplied sermons are preached condemning the practise of abortion.

Coming from these sermons and activities will no doubt be other activities designed to attempt to reverse the general social acceptance of abortion on demand.

I cannot approve of abortion.

Nevertheless, I am deeply disturbed by the reaction of many, if not most, of my fellow evangelical Christians.

First, I am concerned at the tendency to harness the churches in an attempt to legislate against specific moral evils.

The Faith of Christ the Lord is not to be reduced to a mere political institution.

The message of life is delivered in order to change hearts, and we are convinced that that changed hearts will result in transformed lives.

Again, I view much of the efforts of evangelical Christians as cheap Christianity.

Too many of my fellow Christians are looking for an easy way to serve God.

We are given a commission by Christ Himself—a commission to win souls and thus transform lives.

If we are unwilling to win the lost, we have no moral right to tell those same lost people how they should live their lives.

Too few of us have inconvenienced ourselves to comfort a terrified teenager wondering how her parents will react to the presence of an unanticipated grandchild.

Too few of us have opened our homes and our hearts to receive these frightened girls, much less to receive the children if they should be born.

Too few of us have been willing to listen to our own children, to hear them as they struggle against the pressure to conform to the mores of a fallen world.

The churches are not to become just another political entity, but we of the Faith are to serve as lights in the midst of the darkness.

We do this as individuals and not as a political power.

My concern is not simply that abortion exists as the principle means of birth control in our nation today, my concern is that the churches have failed to address a dark secret.

Many congregations contain men who pressured women to have abortions.

These men struggle with feelings of guilt over their actions when they think about them.

Many congregations contain women who terminated a pregnancy before they came to faith.

These women struggle with fear and guilt over what they think is a dark secret.

Nancy Pruett, director of the American Family Association, stated last year that “even pro-life believers, when faced with the shame of a pregnancy outside of marriage, will do as King David did.

She remarked that Christians “will resort to murder to cover the sin.

Some don't believe their church would ever accept them if they had [borne] the child.

Many Christian parents insist that their churchgoing teen-ager abort rather than bring shame on the family.”

This is a shocking statement which should challenge us as Christians.

I may have doubted such contentions at one time, but I no longer question her statement and the shocking evidence she presented at that time.

The Barna research organisation has documented a disappointing slide in moral acuity during the past decade.

One study, dated September 10, 2001, bears the title *Practical Outcomes Replace Biblical Principles* as the Moral Standard.[2]

Another study, dated August 6, 2001, informs us that born again adults are just as likely to divorce as are non-Christians.[3]

Such studies lead me to believe that there is a dreadful slippage in moral standards among professed evangelical believers.

Therefore, the assertion of Nancy Pruett becomes all together too believable.

The question is not, “Are there among us men and women who have sinned in this manner.”

The question which should attract our attention is “How should we, as believers in the Word of God, respond to those hurting people among us who have chosen to kill the young which God has given?”

This is the message to which God has directed me this day.

This is the study God has called me to present.

May He give me His strength to accomplish His will as I seek to instruct each of us who name the Name of Christ, and as I endeavour to comfort those who hurt among us.

The Account of David’s Sin — It is a terrible recitation of human sinfulness before us.

David saw a woman bathing.

Though informed that she was another man’s wife, David sent for this woman determined to sleep with her.

Because he was king, he knew that he could send for her without anyone questioning what he was doing.

He was accountable to no man!

The woman’s husband, Uriah, was absent, serving the king as a soldier in defence of the nation during the spring campaigns.

Uriah was not just any soldier—He was armour-bearer to the field marshal.[4]

He was himself a man of considerable importance.

The king knew all this, and yet he slept with Uriah’s wife and she became pregnant.

Time passed and the woman missed her period.

She likely waited some time to confirm for certain that she was pregnant.

Eventually, she informed David that she was pregnant.

The king deliberately chose to deceive his loyal servant.

He sent for Uriah, husband of Bathsheba whom the king had impregnated.

When Uriah arrived in the city, David attempted to induce him to go home and sleep with his wife.

Uriah was a man of noble character; he was unwilling to avail himself of any creature comforts so long as the armies of the king were engaged in combat.

He had shared their hardship in the field, and though he was back in Jerusalem at the King’s command, he would forego all pleasures, enduring hardship, as did his comrades.

David then attempted to get Uriah drunk so he would lower his standard and go home to sleep with his wife, but the good man refused to surrender his standard calling for united sacrifice together with the armies of the king.

He would not give himself pleasure while others sacrificed.

David resorted to murder by proxy to cover his sin.

Others needn’t know that Uriah had not slept with his wife—if he died in combat.