2 Samuel 11:5-15

5 Later, when Bathsheba discovered that she was pregnant, she sent David a message, saying, “I’m pregnant.”6 Then David sent word to Joab: “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” So Joab sent him to David. 7 When Uriah arrived, David asked him how Joab and the army were getting along and how the war was progressing. 8 Then he told Uriah, “Go on home and relax.” David even sent a gift to Uriah after he had left the palace. 9 But Uriah didn’t go home. He slept that night at the palace entrance with the king’s palace guard. 10 When David heard that Uriah had not gone home, he summoned him and asked, “What’s the matter? Why didn’t you go home last night after being away for so long?” 11 Uriah replied, “The Ark and the armies of Israel and Judah are living in tents,[c] and Joab and my master’s men are camping in the open fields. How could I go home to wine and dine and sleep with my wife? I swear that I would never do such a thing.” 12 “Well, stay here today,” David told him, “and tomorrow you may return to the army.” So Uriah stayed in Jerusalem that day and the next. 13 Then David invited him to dinner and got him drunk. But even then he couldn’t get Uriah to go home to his wife. Again he slept at the palace entrance with the king’s palace guard. 14 So the next morning David wrote a letter to Joab and gave it to Uriah to deliver. 15 The letter instructed Joab, “Station Uriah on the front lines where the battle is fiercest. Then pull back so that he will be killed.”

Days, if not weeks, pass by. David may very well have forgotten about his sin with Uriah’s wife, but then he receives news that she is pregnant, you can’t hide sin; oops David hadn’t planned on that possibility. Davis is now faced with two options; Gods plan or his own, Confess or Cover up. The cover up is always a scam, it doesn’t work.  David wasn’t the first one to try it and he won’t be the last. Adam was the first one to come up with a plan to try and deal with his own sin; he tried to hide his sin with leaves and trees. The cover up always leads to more sin, in this case deceit and murder, where confession always leads to cleansing. David, being a great military strategist, comes up with his own plan to deal with his sin. His plan, which at first seems simple enough, make it look like the baby is not his. This is called not taking responsibility for your actions. It’s a plan that involves using others, by trying to shift responsibility from self to others. Instead of using his military strategy to win the real battle now he is using it to try and win his own battle. Unfortunately this results in pulling others out of the real battle!

Remember Sin #1: Adultery, David tries to cover this up with Sin #2: Deceit. David has Joab go get , Bathsheba’s husband, and tell him to take a couple of days off and spend with his wife, simple enough. Unfortunately for David, the plan did not work. Uriah had served David since the early days when David was a fugitive, running from Saul. He didn’t cooperate with David’s sin, he did not go home because he was a faithful warrior, focused on the men and the battle. In contrast to David who was unfaithful, focusing instead on himself and his own battle. Sin will always shift your focus and when we get our eyes off the real battle we lose the war. David even tried getting him drunk, but Uriah’s sense of duty and honor was strong enough to overcome all of David’s tactics. Don’t hate people who won’t go along with your sin, praise God for them. David’s simple plan starts to get complicated, our plans always do. God has a nice simple plan for us to follow.

So what does David do? Same old thing Sin #3: Murder: If you can’t cover it up with a little dirt back up the dump truck. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So David sends a letter to Joab that puts Uriah on the front line in a no-win situation. Sin doesn’t just affect us and it always leads to death! Verse 17 says “Uriah the Hittite was killed along with several other Israelite soldiers.” Cover-ups are often like that, a lot of innocent people get hurt while we are trying to hide the truth. David is supposed to be at war killing the enemy and now we find him using the enemy to kill his own, isn’t it amazing how far off track sin can really take us. Uriah’s name means “My light is the Lord. David, a man after God’s heart, has allowed his own heart to become so dull, so darkened, that he sets out to extinguish the light of the Lord in Uriah. Sin always brings darkness.

David’s reaction to the death of Uriah reveals his heart. 25 “Well, tell Joab not to be discouraged,” David said. “The sword devours this one today and that one tomorrow! Fight harder next time, and conquer the city!” Notice David’s instructions “Fight harder”, this from a man who has yet to show up to the battle. David didn’t even flinch at the news; his focus was on one thing, and only one thing, hiding his sin, at any cost. Now, with Uriah out of the way, David could make the Cover-up complete: After David so kindly let Bathsheba mourn the death of her husband, he made a gesture of supposed nobility, the king took the poor widow in and made her one of his wives. He thought the whole incident was covered up, he only overlooked one small detail: you can’t hide your heart from God. What about you? What are you hiding? Is it time to get alone with God?

Part 1: The Sin

2 Samuel 11:1-5

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.”

Over the next four devotions we will look at the life of David and Bathsheba, we will see: 1. The Sin, 2. the Scam, 3. the Shame, and 4. the Solution. Is this a story of judgment and condemnation, or a story of grace, restoration, and hope? I think we have somehow separated these in our minds, and for those willing to admit their sin and accept God’s judgment, grace, and restoration, we discover it is both. We must remember that God’s agenda is not to crush sinners under his feet, but to heal them and to restore their relationship with Him. Sin always affects our intimacy with God; Adam hid, Jonah fled, Peter denied.

Our last two posts dealt with David showing up to the battle field and boldly going out to meet the enemy giant Goliath. This was not the last battle David faced, and he becomes known as David the warrior-king. Yet “in the spring, at the time when kings go off to war” we find David hanging back from the battle and hanging out at the palace. He wasn’t where he was supposed to be; David’s place was with his armies not his amenities. Where are you hanging out? What if David had showed up to the battle, this whole incident would never have happened and he would not have lost the war. There have been many reasons suggested as to why David didn’t go out to the battlefield, but the bottom line is we will always loose the battle when we don’t show up! He wasn’t where he belonged, he was inactive, which is often the first step of a downhill slide. Are you in the battle or on the sidelines? There is a great danger when we become inactive in our spiritual life, when we don’t show up for battle. Not showing up is dangerous in any area of our life. Relationships fall apart because we don’t work at them. A beautiful garden is destroyed by neglect; a house crumbles around you if you don’t maintain it. Many people die prematurely because they neglecting their health. David’s son Solomon put it this way in Proverbs 24:33-34, “You sleep a little; you take a nap. You fold your hands and lie down to rest.  Soon you will be as poor as if you had been robbed” Are you going to show up? Are you where you are supposed to be or are you avoiding the battle?

David couldn’t sleep so one evening he gets out of bed and takes a stroll on the terrace. There’s no indication that David was “on the prowl,” but he wasn’t ready for the battle, he had already let his guard down and night time can be a dangerous time. Now he is up late looking at something he shouldn’t, his eyes should have be on the war not the woman. It’s hard to focus on what you need to when you’re in the wrong place looking at the wrong stuff.  One of the greatest battles you will ever face takes place on one of the smallest battle grounds, your mind.

I should point out here that, when viewed through the eyes of modern western civilization, it’s all too easy to conclude that Bathsheba shares in David’s guilt as a willing participant, or if nothing else, an immodest woman who had no business bathing where the King could see her. In that society’s governmental system, the King was the absolute authority. If Bathsheba was summoned to the King’s palace, then she came to the palace or risked execution for defying the King. As far as her bathing I’m sure she had no expectation that she would be seen, since the King was, after all, supposed to be on the battlefield with her husband. I don’t think David set out to commit an insidious sin, people seldom do, but because of his own decisions David ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time, making one poor choice after another. It starts with David being lax, when he chooses not to go to war which leads to him looking, looking leads to lingering, which involves him inquiry as to who she is. Laxness, Looking and lingering lead him to lusting, and by the time he learned that she was married, David had already let lust get its nasty little hooks into his heart. In the Laxness, looking, lingering and lusting the battle is lost. Why are you losing the battle?  In our society we have a nice name for this we call it an affair, but let’s be honest, it’s adultery and people are getting hurt. David as king was supposed to be protecting God’s people by leading God’s army against the enemy. This is a case of him abusing his power and position for his own pleasure instead of others protection. Sin affects your serving, instead of serving others you end up serving self. As king he was supposed to be leading by example from the front, you can’t lead from the back. Is it time to step up and get alone with God?