A “Private” Affair?

A “Private” Affair?

10 “Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.” 11 Thus says the LORD, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. 12 For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun.’”

2 Samuel 12:10-12 (ESV)

With hidden cameras everywhere, it is not uncommon to see the television rebroadcast a thief at work after-hours in a store or warehouse. What the felon thought was a secret crime turns out to be an object of national contempt. His family is humiliated. His illicit gain is stripped from him, and then the court assesses punishment, duly noted in the public record. This is the sort of fate that all who practice adultery risk—not just at the hands of surveillance experts, tribunals, and the media, but ultimately through the working of a sovereign and jealous Lord God.

The prophet Nathan brought this word to David in the wake of the king’s affair with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah. He had been “caught on camera,” and now the consequences would play out in dreadful fashion. Chaos and treachery were to enter even his own family (v. 11). For instance, Prince Amnon would rape his beautiful half-sister Tamar (13:1-14), and Absalom, the king’s son, would sleep with the whole royal harem on the roof of the palace (16:22) while leading a rebellion against his father (15:13-14). The sordid drama would be played out “in the sight of the sun,” in plain daylight (vv. 11-12), for all to see.

But this is not just a sad story of a man’s failure; it is a vicious story, for David was not simply inattentive to God’s Sixth and Seventh Commandments. He “despised” the divine lawgiver Himself (v. 10). By his deeds, he showed that he held God in contempt. This same word for “despised,” bazah, and its cognates describe the fool’s disdain for wisdom (Prov. 1:7), Esau’s dismissal of his birthright (Gen. 25:34), maltreatment of the prophets’ message (2 Chron. 36:16), and Sanballat’s laughter at Jerusalem’s wall-builders (Neh. 2:19). It is even connected to the word for “tread” or “trample” (buwc), used to describe the fate of God’s foes in Psalm 108:13 and elsewhere.

David, then, was not like the hapless crook whose bumbling efforts appear on tape. He was more like the terrorists whose images were captured as they passed through the airport checkpoint the early morning of September 11, 2001. They hated America and would fly death and destruction into symbols of her strength. It was an act of aggression and not mere self-serving.

The believer who defies God’s law is not only irresponsible, subjecting his family and others to personal ruin. He insults God, proclaiming by his actions that God’s provision in his life is inadequate and that God’s sense of what is best is second rate, needing supplementary allowances.

God did not include this account in the Bible to vent His anger or trumpet His triumph over an arrogant David. He used it to shout warning to all His followers, and specifically to all His leaders,1 that sin is dangerous and that those who are traveling down the road to adultery, or within an adulterous relationship, must stop immediately before it is too late—not only to escape earthly consequences, but supremely to restore fellowship with their Creator, a relationship upon which all else hinges, both in this world and in the world to come.

http://www.kairosjournal.org/document.aspx?DocumentID=6396&QuadrantID=1&CategoryID=10&TopicID=18&L=1

GracePointe Baptist Church

2209 N Post Road

Oklahoma City, OK 73141

Phone: (405) 769-5050

http://www.gracepointeonline.com