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2nd
Samuel 11:6-27 “And
David sent to Joab, saying, Send me Uriah the Hittite. And Joab sent Uriah to David. 7
And when Uriah was come unto him, David
demanded of him how Joab did, and how the people did, and how the war
prospered. 8 And
David said to Uriah, Go down to thy house, and wash thy feet. And Uriah departed out of the king’s house,
and there followed him a mess of meat from the king. 9
But Uriah slept at the door of the
king’s house, with all the servants of his lord, and went not down to his
house. 10 And
when they had told David, saying, Uriah went not down unto his house, David
said unto Uriah, Camest thou not from thy journey? why then didst
thou not go down unto thine house? 11
And Uriah said unto David, The ark, and
Israel, and Judah, abide in tents; and my lord Joab, and the servants of my
lord, are encamped in the open fields; shall I then go into mine house, to eat
and to drink, and to lie with my wife? as thou livest, and as thy
soul liveth, I will not do this thing. 12
And David said unto Uriah, Tarry here to
day also, and to morrow I will let thee depart.
So Uriah abode in Jerusalem that day, and the morrow. 13
And when David had called him, he did
eat and drink before him; and he made him drunk: and at even he went out to lie on his bed
with the servants of his lord, but went not down to his house. 14
And it came to pass in the morning, that
David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. 15
And he wrote in the letter, saying, Set
ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that
he may be smitten, and die. 16 And
it came to pass, when Joab observed the city, that he assigned Uriah unto a
place where he knew that valiant men were. 17
And the men of the city went out, and
fought with Joab: and there fell some
of the people of the servants of David; and Uriah the Hittite died also. 18
Then Joab sent and told David all the
things concerning the war; 19 and
charged the messenger, saying, When thou hast made an end of telling the matters
of the war unto the king, 20 and
if so that the king’s wrath arise, and he say unto thee, Wherefore approached
ye so nigh unto the city when ye did fight? knew ye not that they would shoot
from the wall? 21 Who
smote Abimelech the son of Jerubbesheth? did not a woman cast a piece of a
millstone upon him from the wall, that he died in Thebez? why went ye nigh the
wall? then say thou, Thy servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also. 22
So the messenger went, and came and
shewed David all that Joab has sent him for. 23
And the messenger said unto David, Surely
the men prevailed against us, and came out unto us into the field, and we were
upon them even unto the entering of the gate. 24
And the shooters shot from off the wall
upon thy servants; and some of the king’s servants be dead, and thy
servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also. 25
Then David said unto the messenger, Thus
shalt thou say unto Joab, Let not this thing displease thee, for the sword
devoureth one as well as another: make
the battle more strong against the city, and overthrow it: and encourage him. 26
And when the wife of Uriah heard that
Uriah her husband was dead, she mourned for her husband. 27
And when the mourning was past, David
sent and fetched her to his house, and she became his wife, and bare him a
son. But the thing that David had done
displeased the LORD.” Introduction:
Making Things Right Is Always Better Than Leaving Things Wrong [Audio
version: https://resources.ccphilly.org/detail.asp?TopicID=&Teaching=WED671] “We
have come as far as verse 5, and I’ll read down, it says “And it came to
pass, after the year was expired, at the time when kings go forth to battle,
that David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they
destroyed the children of Ammon, and besieged Rabbah. But David tarried still at Jerusalem. And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that
David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king’s
house: and from the roof he saw a woman
washing herself;” now I believe Bathsheba knows who lives next door, and
she’s taking a bath on the roof, but God holds David accountable in this, you
know a woman can make herself look attractive without making herself seductive,
so when you’re out on the roof taking a bath, you’ve crossed the line of
attractive I think, “and the woman was very beautiful to look
upon. And David sent and enquired after
the woman. And one said, Is
not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam,” one of David’s mighty men,
“the wife of Uriah the Hittite? And
David” trampling over all of that, “sent messengers, and took her; and
she came in unto him, and he lay with her; for she was purified from her
uncleanness: and she returned unto her
house. And the woman conceived, and sent
and told David, and said, I am with child.” (verses 1-5) So, the deed is done. David was not meant to be lounging in the
palace, God made David a warrior, and the place he should have been was on the
battlefield, that’s where he was the safest.
He was not safe in this battle at all, he loses it. On the battlefield with a sword and a shield
and a bow, he’d have been completely safe, that’s where he was meant to
be. He is in the wrong place at the
wrong time, and he gets himself into a situation that he should never have
gotten himself into, he crosses a line, no doubt, under great conviction,
involves himself with the wife of one of his mighty men. One of his mighty thirty, you read of this 30
of them that stand out above the rest, Uriah is one of them, the daughter of
Eliam, one of his mighty men, and she’s the granddaughter of Ahithophel his
closest counselor. So David is trampling
over all kinds of things to do this, and of course she sends word, ‘Guess
what, I’m pregnant.’ We’ve learned a
lot of lessons from David, going through, and God never hides the sins of his
people, and this is written out very clear for us. And there are lessons certainly for us to
learn from David’s life in regards to things that we want to do, and we love to
reflect, and there are lessons we learn in David’s life, things we never want
to do, and we definitely don’t want to do what David did here, and that’s where
we’re at, at this point in time. And the
question is, at this point in time, what does David do? She sends word and says ‘I’m pregnant,’
because in the Old Testament, adultery was a capital crime. If you were caught in adultery, you were put
to death. There was no sacrifice for
adultery. And you think, if you’re in
David’s position, what do you do at this point in time? You call for Nathan. Do you pray?
Do you go to the priest? Do you
come clean? Do you bring things out into
the open? Big question, big question,
because it’s easy for me to sit here and give David advice, but it’s another
thing to be in that position, where you’ve sinned, you’ve crossed the line,
there are major consequences attached to that sin. You know you shouldn’t have done it, and how
do you maneuver from that point forward?
And listen, here’s why it’s important.
Because however difficult it is to come clean, however hard, and I can’t
imagine how hard it is in some circumstances to make things right, however
hard it would have been for David to make things right, there is something
that’s yet harder than making things right, and that is leaving things wrong. No matter how hard it would have been for him
to make things right, at this point in time, what God shows us as we go through
this, is it was way harder to leave things they way they were. And he begins a process of lying now and
deception. Listen, just a basic rule, so
you know this. All adulterers are
liers. It just doesn’t mean I don’t love
them, doesn’t mean I don’t talk to them or counsel them, it just means I don’t
expect any truth from them while I’m talking to them. And if they lie to me I don’t care, because I
know they’re a liar, and they need to get their heart right with the Lord,
because all adulterers have lied to themselves first, to get themselves into
that circumstance, and then every other lie is a lesser lie of that initial
lie. Every one of God’s people that can
cross that line, knowing there’s a sacredness to marriage, and get themselves
into that circumstance, whatever led up to it, and look, nobody’s just doing
great, on fire, fasting and praying, doing great, and just one afternoon goes
out and commits adultery. It doesn’t
happen. ‘I don’t understand, they
were doing great yesterday, they were on fire,’ well no they weren’t, they were
burning but it was with something else.
All sin has a history. It isn’t
born in a hour. [And as I showed in the
last transcript how far that history might have gone with David and Bathsheba,
that it had to have started as she was growing up, coming into and out of
David’s palace as a young girl, then as a beautiful teenager tagging along with
Ahithophel her grandfather, David knew this girl, and she knew David. An emotional bond must have been forming over
the years. That’s my analysis, we’ll find
out if I’m right at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb (cf. Revelation
19:7-10).] David had taken more wives
than he should have taken, he had played with this, he was not satisfied, he
had at least 11 wives, probably more than we know of at this point in time, and
that hadn’t satisfied him, because it doesn’t.
Whether it’s drugs, whether it’s alcohol, whether it’s women, whether
it’s men, whatever it is, no matter how much we stack on, we’re never
satisfied, because there’s a place inside of us that only God satisfies, that
only God satisfies. Well David will
rediscover that. But we’re going to be
hard on him tonight. But we’re going to
love that man as we go forward. We’re
going to see his humanness, he’s made of the same stuff the rest of us are made
of. But I know if he was here tonight,
he would say ‘Watch me spiral downward, and make sure, if you’re in hot
water already, that you don’t go from the frying pan into the fire.’ Get hold of your sin, compromise, whatever it
might be, and make it right. Because the
thing that is yet harder, is to leave it wrong.
And let’s watch this, as he moves into these circumstances now. David
Sends For Uriah He
knows now, she is pregnant. So, “And
David sent to Joab,” to the battlefront, “saying, Send me Uriah
the Hittite. And Joab sent Uriah to
David. And when Uriah was come unto him,
David demanded of him how Joab did, and how the people did, and how the
war prospered.” (verses 6-7) Complete hypocrisy, David doesn’t give a hoot
about what’s going on, on the battlefront, what he wants to do is get this
young man, whose a fit man, a mighty man of battle, back into the city, act
like he’s enquiring of the war, talk with him, fellowship with him, get
supposedly some intelligence on the battlefront, and then send him home to his
wife that night, knowing, young guy, loves his wife, he’s going to have sexual relationships
with her, then he’s going to go back to the battlefront, and when word comes
out that Bathsheba’s pregnant, then, of course, it was Uriah, he was home. So David, listen, has already come to the
point where he’s willing to deceive another man into raising his child. Just think what’s involved here. He’s already come to the point where he’s
willing to deceive this man, and then let this man raise his child as his
own. Which means, he’s willing to let
Bathsheba lie for the rest of her life, and keep something covered, that no
doubt would eat her up inside for the rest of her life. Think what David has to be scheming about, to
make some of these decisions. And his continued
sin now is drawing all of these people in.
He’s lied to Uriah, he didn’t care about the battlefront. Now he’s going to try to send him home to his
wife. “And David said to Uriah, Go
down to thy house, and wash thy feet.
And Uriah departed out of the king’s house, and there followed him a
mess of meat from the king.” (verse 8)
you gotta like a king, send you home with a mess of meat. [Pastor Joe is a meat-o-saurus 😊] I’m a carnivore, I would have enjoyed
that. ‘Here’s a prime rib, go on
home, enjoy yourself, enjoy your wife, have a great time.’ “But Uriah slept at the door of the king’s
house, with all the servants of his lord, and went not down to his house.”
(verse 9) I don’t know if he slept with his meat there, I don’t know. “And when they had told David, saying,
Uriah went not down unto his house, David said unto Uriah, Camest thou not from
thy journey? why then didst thou not go down unto thine house?”
(verse 10) ‘Man, what’s your problem?’
“And Uriah said unto David,” listen, “The ark, and Israel, and
Judah, abide in tents; and my lord Joab, and the servants of my lord, are
encamped in the open fields; shall I then go into mine house, to eat and to
drink, and to lie with my wife? as thou livest, and as thy soul
liveth, I will not do this thing.” (verse 11) Listen to what he’s saying, Uriah is a Hittite
who is believing with stronger faith than David at this point in time. “Uriah” means “the Lord Jehovah is my light.” And Uriah is no doubt, though a Hittite, a
convert. And he says to David, and he
probably had learned these things observing David. David probably had been his example in many
of these things. He said ‘David,
how could I go? The Ark of our LORD,
it’s in the battlefield, in jeopardy, Joab, the men, Israel, Judah, they’re in
tents, they’re in the battlefield. How
am I supposed to go home and enjoy my wife?’ Uriah, at this point in time, is a man of way
more character than David. ‘Am I
supposed to do this? David, should I go
home and lie with my wife,’ David did.
“as thou livest, and as thy soul liveth, I will not do
this thing.” (verse 11c) Plan
B--Get Uriah Drunk & Send Him Home To Bathsheba David’s
‘Okay, what’s plan-B?’ “And
David said unto Uriah, Tarry here to day also, and to morrow I will let thee
depart. So Uriah abode in Jerusalem that
day, and the morrow. And when David had
called him, he did eat and drink before him; and he made him drunk: and at even he went out to lie on his bed
with the servants of his lord, but went not down to his house.” (verses
12-13) So not only now is David
lying to the guy, got his wife pregnant, trying to deceive him, the guy’s
showing some genuine character, the kind, you’re Navy Seals, you’re Special
Ops, Delta Force, and David’s now getting the guy pickled, trying to get him to
compromise his standards, he’s getting him drunk. He made him drunk, David’s the king, when the
king says ‘Here, try this wine, you’ll like it, this is a great year,
1450BC, tell me what you think. Here,
try this, have some of this.’ He
made him drunk, “and at even he went out to lie on his bed with the servants
of his lord, but went not down to his house.” (verse 13b) So he staggered out the front door and
collapsed right there again with the rest of the guys. Out
Of Options--David Tells Joab To Have Uriah Killed Off In Battle--The Trouble
With Lying David
is out of plans at this point in time, “And it came to pass in the morning,
that David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of
Uriah. And he wrote in the letter,
saying, Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from
him, that he may be smitten, and die.” (verses 14-15) And look, he sends this letter by the hand of
Uriah, and he puts the death warrant right into the hand of Uriah, Uriah’s
carrying his own death warrant. And he’s
so trusted by David, that David’s not even worried about him opening up the letter
and seeing what it says. And Uriah so
admires and trusts David, he has no inkling.
And Joab never read this chapter, and doesn’t know that David has slept
with Uriah’s wife. Joab doesn’t know
that Bathsheba’s pregnant. What does
Joab think when the letter comes to him?
Because to Joab, David is a man to be trusted. David is a man to admire, David is a man that
God has raised up, a great warrior. Joab
has great admiration for David, so he must think that David knows Uriah is
guilty of something deserving death.
Joab, no doubt, has great struggle with this. Here’s David putting the death notice in the
hand of the man that will be killed. And
he’s so trustworthy he carries his own death notice to Joab. Joab so trusts David, that now he’s entering
into David’s sin, and he’s going to commit murder on the word of the king, and
he doesn’t know it. What will Joab think
as time goes on, and he comes to discover that David had Uriah murdered because
he had gotten his wife pregnant? That
will come to pass. And David’s going to
find out after that, that it’s hard to fire Joab. If David hires another general, Joab kills
him and says ‘I’m still here.’
And what’s David going to say? because he killed Uriah, no, he can’t get
rid of Joab after this. He’s dragging
everybody down, when you start lying, here’s what’s happening when you tell a
lie to somebody. And somebody else comes
up and asks you something, and you’re going to tell them the lie, but you got
to remember the exact way you told the lie to the other person, so if they
talk, the lies match up. And then when
the third person, you know, especially in the church, once one person knows,
then you have to propagate this lie, it compounds. You have to be a really good liar to last for
awhile. And every time you lie, you got
to do it perfectly, so there’s no conflicting stories in your lie, because it
spreads. See, if you just tell the
truth, you can be stupid like me, it’s so much easier, there’s so much less
stress. I get in enough trouble just telling
the truth. But lie after lie is being
compounded now. He says to Joab ‘When
he comes back, you send Uriah to the hottest part of the battle, send him into
it, then draw your men back and let him get killed.’ That’s not sitting right with
Joab. He’s a general, that’s not the way
you do battle, you don’t put a sacrificial lamb out there. We can tell by what he does, he must struggle
with this. And it says in verse 16,
“And it came to pass, when Joab observed the city, that he assigned Uriah unto
a place where he knew that valiant men were.” he knew where the
mighty men were battling, he knew where the battle was thick, he doesn’t say he
pulled everybody back and let Uriah die, it says he put him in that unit in the
thick of the battle. “And the men of
the city went out, and fought with Joab:” so Joab’s right in there with
him, “and there fell some of the people of the servants of David; and
Uriah the Hittite died also.” (verse 17) notice, “there fell some” not
just Uriah. So David now is costing the
lives of other men, and not just of Uriah the Hittite. The only positive slant here, is we don’t
believe that David is thirsty for the blood of Uriah. It’s not a, he’s not vindictive, he’s worried
and he’s trying to cover up his sin. And
he would have had the same plan for any man, whoever it was, he didn’t hate
Uriah above other men, he just happened to get his wife pregnant, and he’s in
that situation. Just, I’m trying to be
optimistic here on David’s behalf, a bit anyway. “Then Joab sent and told David all the
things concerning the war; and he charged the messenger, saying, When thou hast
made an end of telling the matters of the war unto the king, and if so be that
the king’s wrath arise, and he say unto thee, Wherefore approached ye so nigh
unto the city when ye did fight? knew ye
not that they would shoot from the wall?
Who smote Abimelech the son of Jerubbsheth? did not a woman cast a piece
of a millstone upon him from the wall, that he died in Thebez? why went ye nigh
the wall? then say thou, Thy servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.” (verses
18-21) Isn’t it interesting, David
[and Joab too] was familiar with the Book of Judges, must have had a copy, and
Joab knows, David’s a military commander.
He said ‘When you go back and tell him that five or six of the
Seal Team got killed, David’s going to be furious, and he’s gonna say ‘What in
the world kind of strategy is that, you pulled up next to the wall, they had
the high ground, you guys ever read the Bible?’ He’s got guts, doesn’t he? he’s committed
adultery, he’s committed murder, now he’s [Joab’s afraid he’s] going to yell at
somebody because they haven’t read their Bible.
‘Didn’t you ever read what happened in the Book of Judges, and
this happened and a woman threw a millstone over the wall and killed
Abimelech?’ Joab says, if he
does that, you just say ‘Uriah the Hittite is dead also.’ “So the messenger went, and came and
shewed David all that Joab had sent him for.
And the messenger said unto David, Surely the men prevailed against us,
and came out unto us into the field, and we were upon them even unto the
entering of the gate. And the shooters
shot from off the wall upon thy servants; and some of the king’s
servants be dead, and thy servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.” (verses
22-24) So he doesn’t even wait for
David to get mad, he just tells it right out.
“Then David said unto the messenger, Thus shalt thou say unto Joab,
Let not this thing displease thee, for the sword devoureth one as well as
another: make thy battle more strong
against the city, and overthrow it: and
encourage thou him.” (verse 25) it’s
literally “don’t let this thing be evil in your eyes.” When we get down to verse 27 this chapter
ends, “But the thing David had done displeased the LORD.”
the same exact phrase, ‘the thing that David had done was evil in the
eyes of the LORD.’
He says to the messenger ‘You go back
and you tell Joab, let not this thing displease thee,’ because he knows
Joab must be wrestling with it, ‘You know, what did I do? I’m responsible not just for Uriah, man, we
lost some comrades here, we lost some guys we’ve been through battles
with. We lost some men that were men
incomparable, guys that would have laid down their lives for me, guys that I
would have laid down my life for.’ And
David knows what that means, and he says ‘Tell Joab, don’t let this thing
be evil in your sight,’ bad attitude, ‘for the sword devoureth
one as well as another, you win some, you lose some, cum se, cum sa.’ You don’t apply that to lives of
human beings. “make thy battle strong
against the city, and overthrow it: and
encourage thou him.” (verse 25c) He
says, ‘just tell Joab go on in and wipe them out, and encourage thou
him.’ “Be
Sure Your Sin Will Find You Out” “And
when the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she mourned for
her husband.” (verse 26) now, the Bible just
tells us that, we’re going to assume that that’s not a ruse, you know, it was
certainly part of the culture, she would have mourned at least seven days
publicly. But there’s evidence in the
character of the woman, though she’s made a terrible mistake, that she may be
thinking ‘LORD,
what did I do, my husband’s dead, my behavior, my deceit, my infidelity,’ so
she mourned, she mourned for her husband.
And David, thinking all things are hidden at this point in time. If he read Judges, he should have read
Numbers too, where it says “Be sure your sin will find you out.” “And when the mourning was past, David
sent and fetched her to his house, and she became his wife, and bare him a
son. But the thing that David had done
displeased the LORD.”
(verse 27) Now,
that goes quickly, David sent for her, we’re not sure how much time goes back
and forth, with the word back to Joab, the death of Uriah, the word back to
Jerusalem, traveling back and forth, they weren’t emailing, so there’s a little
bit of time involved here. There was no
welfare system in that day, there was no Social Security checks that Bathsheba
was going to get, there was no pension from the military, it was typical in the
family for someone to be magnanimous and then care for someone’s wife. No doubt, some of the folks thought ‘Well
she’s pregnant, that was from when Uriah was back,’ and no doubt some of
them thought ‘David’s being very magnanimous, he’s showing charity, he’s
taken this woman of one of his mighty men to be his wife and to raise Uriah’s
child here.’ He fetched her to his
house, it says, and she became his wife, and she bare him a son. Notice this, “But the thing that David had
done displeased the LORD.”
literally, “was evil in the eyes
of the LORD.” You know, as I read this chapter, one thing I
think is, I’m glad God finished the Bible before I was born, you should think
that too, don’t laugh at me. David is
not at rest here. This period of almost
a year, we’re going to read in Psalm 32, Psalm 51, this man is tortured. You think because he has things covered up,
he’s got away with it. And look, I’m
saying it, because some people, they’ll site David, you talk sometimes to
believers that have fallen into sexual sin, they’ll say ‘Well David committed
sin,’ like it’s an excuse. Let me
tell you something, David was tortured, and the consequences of this will go on
for his entire life. David is not
getting away with anything here, and there is nothing covered up, there’s
nothing covered up here. Paul will say “Be
not deceived, God is not mocked, as a man soweth, so shall he reap.” There’s no getting away with it. The Bible is clear, that all things are open
and naked before the one with whom we have to do, and God loves us as much as
he loves David, he doesn’t let us get away with anything either. As a man sows, so shall he reap. You’re never gonna change that. ok?
There’s three laws of sowing and reaping that have not changed. We learn them from nature, and they’re true
spiritually. One is, you always reap the
same kind, if you sow apple seeds, you’re gonna get apples. If you sow barley, you’re gonna get
barley. You’re not going to sow thorns
and get figs, you’re not going to sow thistles and get fruit, you always reap,
God teaches us in his creation, his nature, there’s order, you always reap the
same kind. Second law, you always reap later. Because it doesn’t come the same day doesn’t
mean you’re getting away with anything.
We’re used to instant breakfast, instant-on television, instant cameras,
we don’t have to wait for nothing. The
harvest is always after the planting, not the next day, there’s a period. And the third law is, you always reap more
than you sow, you put in one grain, and you reap the whole shock, you put one
seed in, you get the whole tree. You sow
to the wind, and you reap the whirlwind.
Now listen, there’s a very positive side to that, you’re struggling in
your marriage, what to do in that situation is sow right seed into that
trouble, this seed right here, sow the Word of God in your marriage, when you
have a chance, pray, be gentle, be tender, be understanding, do those things
that are right. And then don’t come back
and say ‘I tried it, I said one nice thing to her, she was as miserable as
ever by the end of the day.’ It
doesn’t work that fast, the harvest is always later. Sow what’s right, and it will come, and it
will come back in greater measure than you invested. God will never owe you anything. He will pay back 100-fold, it is a spiritual
law, it is a spiritual principle. David
is not getting away with anything here, he is going to reap what he’s sown…
‘I got 11 wives, but they always pick on me, I’m looking for one nice one, and
I looked out and there’s Bathsheba, taking a bath out there on the roof, wasn’t
my fault, what am I supposed to do, gouge my eyes out, she was there,’ it
says when we’re tempted, we’re drawn away with our own lust, and lust when it
becomes sin, it conceives, and when sin conceives, it brings forth death, James
tells us in chapter 1, verses 12 and 13…in fact, Paul tells us in Corinthians
that God always makes a way of escape with the temptations that come to us, if
we’ll avail ourselves. So here’s David
in this situation. 2nd
Samuel 12:1-13 “And
the LORD
sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto
him, and said unto him, There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the
other poor. 2 The
rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds: 3
but the poor man had nothing,
save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up: and it grew up together with him, and with
his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in
his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter. 4
And there came a traveller unto the rich
man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for
the wayfaring man that was come unto him; but took the poor man’s lamb, and
dressed it for the man that was come to him.
5 And David’s anger was greatly kindled
against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the LORD
liveth, the man that hath done this thing shalt surely die: 6
and he shall restore the lamb fourfold,
because he had no pity. 7 And
Nathan said to David, Thou art the man.
Thus saith the LORD God
of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the
hand of Saul; 8 and
I gave thee thy master’s house, and thy master’s wives into thy bosom, and gave
thee the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I
would moreover have given unto thee such and such things. 9
Wherefore hast thou despised the
commandment of the LORD,
to do evil in his sight? thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and
hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of
the children of Ammon. 10 Now
therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house; because thou hast
despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife. 11
Thus saith the LORD,
Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will
take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbour, and
he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun. 12
For thou didst it secretly: but I will do this thing before all Israel,
and before the sun. 13 And
David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the LORD. And Nathan said unto David, The LORD
hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die.” The
LORD
Sends Nathan The Prophet To David Look,
between verse 27 of chapter 11 and chapter 12, verse 1, a year goes by, a year
goes by. On your own you want to read
Psalm 32, Psalm 51, but David says this in Psalm 32, he says ‘When
I kept silence, my bones waxed old, through my roaring all the day long, for
day and night thy hand was heavy upon me, my moisture was turned into the
draught of summer. When I acknowledged
my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid, I said I will confess my
transgressions unto the LORD,
thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin,’
and he talks about how things changed.
[see: https://unityinchrist.com/Psalms/Psalms31-32.htm] But he clearly tells us, for a year though he
kept silent, that he was roaring inside, that he was roaring inside, he was not
happy, things were covered up outwardly, but inside, nothing was covered up,
and he was screaming inside, he was being tortured. And if you’re living in sin right now,
because we love you, we hope you’re screaming inside too, we hope you have
insomnia and you get ulcers and that you’re miserable until you repent. Because that’s where things start to get
better for you again. And these things
are not written for us to have an intellectual exercise, they’re put out in
front of us because God knows our humanness also. Look, this is a year, the child is born
already, “And the LORD
sent Nathan unto David.” thank God for Nathan,
God’s timing, look God gave David a year.
I even believe, and it’s my conviction, that when Nathan comes to David
it’s not in front of David’s court and all of David’s men, I think he comes to him
alone. One of my favorite verses in
Genesis chapter 32, verse 24, it says “When Jacob was left alone, there
wrestled a man with him,” when Jacob was left alone, and I find in my life
that God would rather wrestle me down alone than humiliate me in front of a
bunch of people. That he is gracious to
come to me and deal with me, and has no desire to humiliate me in front of my
wife or my children, or my mom or the congregation or my co-labourers, that
when something is not right in my heart, God will come to me and he will
wrestle me down. Because he wants to settle
it there, he has no desire to go public with it and humiliate me. But a whole year has gone by. A whole year has gone by. “And the LORD
sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto
him, and said unto him,” now he gives him this
story, and you have to understand, Nathan is a Prophet, but he’s still
addressing the king. And in the culture
sometimes, there had been Judges, there were priests now, but when sometimes
there was a very difficult case, sometimes it still came to the king. We’re going to see Solomon, they bring a baby
with two moms fighting over the baby. So
Nathan comes to David, David never read the chapter, and David doesn’t know
it’s a parable, he thinks it’s a real situation, and it gets him so angry, that
he pronounces sentence upon himself, he condemns himself. “And the LORD
sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto
him, and said unto him, There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the
other poor.
The rich man had exceeding many
flocks and herds: but
the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought
and nourished up: and it grew up
together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank
of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter.” (verses
1-3) And David the shepherd, no doubt awakening in
his heart, he had taken care of lambs before, no doubt remembering. And listen, this is a parable, but “para”
“balo” is “to lay something alongside.”
So when Jesus tells the parable of the sower, there’s truth in it about
the Word of God, he puts it in a circumstance so you can see it and understand
it. There’s truth here. And one of the very sad things, as we learn,
this is heaven’s parable, given to the prophet to bring to David, and I’m sure
Nathan must have wrestled saying ‘Are you sure, LORD? You want me to tell him this story, are you
sure?’ I’m sure he went through some of that. And now as he’s laying it out, one of the
things we’re discovering about the marriage of Uriah and Bathsheba, is that he
loved her, and that he nourished her, and that he took her to himself, and that
she laid in his bosom, that she was a treasure to him, he cared so deeply for
her. That is woven into the truth of the
relationship, it is woven into this parable, God is never deceptive in that
sense. “And there came a traveller
unto the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd,
to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him; but took the poor man’s
lamb, and dressed it” he slaughtered it, and cut it up, “for the man
that was come to him. And David’s anger
was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the LORD
liveth, the man that hath done this thing shalt surely die: and
he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he had no pity.” (verses 4-7) wait
a minute, David, that’s way beyond the Law, the death penalty is not for cattle
rustling, the guy took a lamb, there is no death penalty in the Old Testament
for stealing a lamb, you get put to death for committing adultery, you get put
to death for committing murder, and Nathan hadn’t even brought the murder of
Uriah into the parable. Just the taking
of his wife. And David is so furious. Don’t
Entertain “The Traveller” When He Comes Around “There
came a traveller,” we’re wondering about
the picture here, you know, it’s giving us a picture of a spiritual truth, and
I wonder, you and I, it says our warfare is not against flesh and blood, but
against principalities and powers and rulers of darkness. And I think some Christians really go
overboard with warfare, they make the enemy way bigger than he is. I mean, we have an enemy. And he no doubt watches us. In the first chapter of Job, God says to
Satan ‘Where have you come from?’ Satan
answers ‘From travelling to and fro throughout the earth,’ he’s
the traveller, he can only be at one place at one time, he’s not omnipresent,
he’s not omniscient, he doesn’t have God’s characteristics, he can only be at
one place at one time. So Christians,
don’t tell me ‘Satan made me do it.’
No offense, it was some private demon that made you do it, Satan has
more important things to do, he’s trying to get Putin to push a button, or Aqminidab
to push a button, he’s trying to do bigger things than just bother you, no
offense, you’re small stuff. But I understand
what you’re saying. God said ‘What
have you been doing?’ and he said ‘I’ve been observing’ that’s
a military word, scrutinizing, ‘your servant Job.’ If Satan sees you sitting in front of
pornography or go past a magazine rack and picking it up, he sees you stopping
in the bar for a six-pack, he sees you, he scrutinizes, sees our weaknesses,
he’s got regiments under him, he knows where the chinks in our armour are, he
certainly knows how to attack us. ‘The
traveller came,’ he says. You
know, when we get to Chronicles, it’s going to tell us this towards the end of
David’s life, “And Satan stood up against Israel and provoked David to
number Israel,” Satan directly involved. Listen, this is the greatest king that the
nation has ever had. This is a king
whose greater Son, the Son of David is going to be the Messiah, and no doubt
Satan has more of a sense of that than David has. And he is a particular target of the enemy,
of all the men on the earth at this point in time. And no doubt here, we get some insight to the
fact that “the traveller came,” that there was a temptation there, there was
warfare, he came, and it says here ‘the rich man yielded, and he came and
he took this poor man’s lamb that he loved, and he took that, and that poor
lamb was sacrificed for the wayfaring man, the traveller.’ Don’t entertain the traveller, and
don’t feed the traveller, don’t entertain the traveller and don’t feed
the traveller when he comes. Look,
you can’t stop yourself from having an angry thought, but that’s different from
sitting all day long thinking ‘I want to do this, I want to poke his eye
out, then I’ll put his mouth on the curb, step on the back of his head and
knock all his teeth out,’ or you lust after a woman, that’s different than
sitting there all day and going, don’t feed the traveller, don’t entertain the
traveller. It says ‘the weapons of
our warfare are not carnal, they’re powerful to the pulling down of
strongholds, that we should bring every thought into the captivity of Christ.’ We do not have to be ashamed, if you have an
ungodly thought, whatever form it might be in or how it comes, to go
immediately in your heart to Jesus and say ‘Lord, I know I shouldn’t be
thinking this, Lord, I’m such a wretch, I’m just bringing it to you. I can’t change this Lord, only you can change
me Lord, I’m just bringing this to you, because don’t let this stay with me, or
else I’m going to feed the traveller, so I’m grabbing all of this and I’m
coming and I’m dumping it before you, Lord, I need your help, I know you love
me, greater is he that’s in me through your Holy Spirit, than he that’s in the
world,’ you can come to him and you can be completely honest with him. David entertained the traveller. He looked at Bathsheba, he thought about it,
he made a decision, and took her to himself.
And when David heard this, listen, “David’s anger was greatly kindled
against the man;” you know why?
Because he had been tortured for a whole year, his nerves were on edge,
there was something roaring inside of him, and when he hears it he goes off the
deep end. Our sins always look worse on
somebody else than they do on us, if you haven’t noticed. F. B. Myers says we have two vocabularies for
sin, we have one vocabulary for our own sin, and we have another vocabulary for
other people’s sins. For our own sin we
say ‘Oh man, I’m struggling, it’s really hard, I was tired, I don’t know, I
just blew it, I know Lord.’ And when
you see somebody else’s sin you say ‘That dog! That rat!
God should strike him with lightning and just burn him up right in front
of everybody.’ He said we have two
vocabularies for sin, one for our own and one for others. And David had a different vocabulary for this
guy, ‘He took somebody else’s lamb, that rich guy, take that guy, smoke him,
that guy’s gonna die!’ He didn’t
understand what Moses said in the Law, he said you restore fourfold, it doesn’t
say kill the guy, ‘That guy needs to die!’ “and he shall restore the
lamb fourfold, because he had no pity.” So
David remembers the Law, he says ‘Alright, let him give fourfold and then
kill him!’ please listen, “because
he had no pity.” Because he had no
pity. “Thou
Art The Man, David” “And
Nathan said to David, Thou art the man.” Kodak
moment, Kodak moment. You notice, David
doesn’t say anything for a long time here, David’s jaw just dropped open,
David’s done killing guys now, ‘Thou art the man, David you’re the man
that had no pity. You’re the man that
not only took the lamb, but you killed the one who owned the lamb, David,
you’re the one.’ “Thou art the man,”
and then Nathan, now Nathan means Gift of God, listen, if you’ve got
a Nathan in your life, I know you don’t appreciate them every day, but thank
God for them, they’re a gift in your life.
Because sometimes we need those Nathans. “And Nathan said to David,
Thou art the man. Thus saith the
LORD God
of Israel,” now ‘David you may be king, but
he’s the God of Israel,’ and he’s speaking directly in the first person on
the LORD’s
behalf, and he’s pointing the finger, “Thou art the man, Thus saith the LORD
God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of
the hand of Saul;” and Goliath, and the
enemies, and the Philistines, “and I gave thee thy master’s house, and thy
master’s wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah;
and if that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee
such and such things.” (verses 7-8) He said ‘David, I gave you everything, I
gave you the dynasty before you, I put everything in your hands, I anointed
you, I delivered you, I’d have given you anything David, there’s no recompence,
there’s no thankfulness here David, where’s your loyalty David? I gave all of this to you, and you choose
passion over everything?’ Scary,
isn’t it? Scary. Listen, warfare, it takes place in the mind,
the Bible knows that, the Holy Spirit knows that, God knows that, the devil
knows that, it takes us a whole lifetime to figure that out. It takes place right up here. If you think things over and over and over, I
guarantee you. If somebody in your life
is a person that drives you nuts, and one of your favorite thoughts, you have
this five-course meal every day in your brain, and you just imagine ‘Whack!’
straight right, left hook, ‘Whack!’
he goes down, hit him when he’s on his knees, ‘Wham!’ knock him
backwards. And if you rehearse that
enough times, and you get in a circumstance, you’re going to act it out without
thinking, because you have played with it and played with it and played with it
and played with it. You’ve rehearsed it
and rehearsed it and rehearsed it, and you’ve only lacked opportunity, and when
the traveller comes, when he does something, and he sticks you in that
opportunity, you may just act out everything that you have thought over and
over and over, don’t do that. That’s
where the warfare is, take it to the Lord, ‘Lord, I know it’s not right to
whack this guy, would you whack him for me? Vengeance is yours Lord,’ ‘Lord,
this woman, or this guy, is always across my path Lord, they’re messing with
me, they’re flirting with me, or my neighbour, I know he’s killing my cats,
every time we get a new cat the cat ends up dead, I think he’s eating them
Lord, I don’t know what he’s doing with them.’
But you can’t do that. The LORD’s
saying ‘I did everything for you, I did all of this, and this is your
response, David?’ Listen to what
he says, “Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the LORD,
to do evil in his sight? thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and
hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of
the children of Ammon.” (verse 9) And David of course, in Psalm 51
would say “Against thee and thee only have I sinned, and done this evil
in thy sight, that thou mayest be justified when thou speakest and clear when
thou judgest” ‘against thee and thee only have I sinned and done
this evil in thy sight,’ ‘All
things are open and naked before the one with whom we have to do,’ that’s
the New Testament, it tells us that. “thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the
sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with
the sword of the children of Ammon.” “hast slain” listen, this word is
“murdered,” it’s a very severe word, God holds David accountable, “you
have murdered him with the sword of the children of Ammon.” ‘it
may have been an Ammonite that killed him, but you used the Ammonite, the
Ammonite was a tool in your hand, you have murdered him with the sword of an
Ammonite, David, why have you done that?’ ‘You have despised my commandments.’ And I wonder if David, you know God had said
to Saul, rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is like
idolatry, and David now, very much the same way, we’re going to see the great
difference between him and Saul, David will repent and it will be genuine. “and hast slain him with the sword of the
children of Ammon. Now therefore the
sword shall never depart from thine house;” that is, as long as David
lived, “because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the
Hittite to be thy wife.” (verse 10) “because thou hast despised me,” please
take note of that. Because people will
play and say ‘Hey, I love God, I even like the Bible, it’s just the verses
that bother me.’ ‘I know I’m
blowing this, but I love God,’ God says ‘No, no, you ain’t, you either
love the Law and the Law-giver, or you hate the Law and the Law-giver, you
either love the Word and the one who gave the Word, or you hate the Word and
the one who gave the Word. You either
love my commandments and love the commandment-giver, or you hate the
commandments and you hate the one that gave the commandments.’ [cf. Romans 8:1-7, esp. verse 7 says
“Because the carnal mind is enmity against God:
for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” i.e. God’s Holy Spirit gives us a love for
God’s Law, as shown by the inverse of verse 7, which is showing that those that
are not God’s and don’t have his Holy Spirit in them actually hate the Law of
God. A true Christian is a Law of
God-keeper, not a Law of God-hater]
Jesus tells us in John 14, verse 21 and 23, “If you love me, you will
keep my commandments.” It is a no-brainer. The
Consequences That Come With Sin And
God says here to him, ‘You’ve despised my commandments,’ and then
he says ‘that is because you’ve despised me, David. And because you’ve despised me, all of these
things are coming on your house.’ Verse
10, “Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house; because thou
hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy
wife. Thus saith the LORD,
Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will
take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbour, and
he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of the sun.” (verses 10-11) Now listen, ‘Evil will never depart
from your house, the sword’ we’re going to see Amnon his son commit
incest with Tamar his half-sister.
What’s David gonna say? ‘You can’t do that?’ no, we’re going to
find out about David, David repents, and on the vertical, David is right with
God. But that doesn’t remove the
consequences. If you get drunk on the
weekend and you punch somebody on top of the head, I’m always talking about
punching, I have deep feeling needs, you hit somebody on the top of their head
and you break your arm, you can repent the next day, but that doesn’t mean the
next day they can take the cast off. It’s
gonna take six weeks for your arm to heal.
And we’re going to see David in this chapter repent genuinely and make
himself vertically right with God again, but the consequences will never leave
his life. He will be the best king he
can be, as a fallen king. But he will
never be the father or the king he was again.
He will be a much greater psalmist by the time it’s over. And at the end of his life, he doesn’t claim
to be king, he says “the sweet psalmist of Israel,” that’s what he ascribes to
himself at the end of his life. Because
as a father, what’s he going to say to Amnon, you can’t sleep with her? And then Absalom is going to kill Amnon his
half-brother, because he raped Tamar.
What’s David going to say, you can’t kill him?--because he had killed
Uriah. And then Absolom is going to
chase his father out, take his throne, and then Absalom is going to take some
of David’s wives and have sex with them right on the roof in front of everybody
else, and then David’s own son Absalom is going to be killed by Joab. Just think of what he’s saying here. You look at the sin, he got Bathsheba
pregnant, and then he starts lying, and then he drags Uriah into it, he drags
Joab into it, then he kills Uriah, then he goes a whole year trying to cover
things up, and finally he’s confronted.
And what it does, the repercussions in his own house, they go on and on,
nobody gets away with it. Don’t ever
think David got away with it. ‘Oh
well David, God loves him,’ well fine, God does love him, and David did
sin. That’s just the engine, look at the
whole train that’s getting pulled behind it.
Look at all the stuff that comes with it. And I can’t imagine that, imagine, I love my
kids, I can’t imagine one of my sons raping his sister, I can’t imagine one of
my sons murdering his brother, in my house.
The agony of that and the pain of that, we read over it. And David was a man of tender nature, besides
being a warrior, he had a very deep, sensitive side. I can’t imagine the agony that lives out in
his life. ‘there will be evil that
raises up against thee out of thine own house, I will take of thy wives before
thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy wives
in the sight of the sun.’ A lot
of bad fruit, one root, a single root, all this bad fruit, all the
branches. “For thou didst it
secretly: but I will do this thing before
all Israel, and before the sun.” (verse 12) ‘you committed adultery and
murder secretly, but I will do this thing before all of Israel, and before the
sun.’ “And David said unto Nathan, I
have sinned against the LORD. And Nathan said unto David, The LORD
also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die.” (verse 13) He tells us in
Psalm 51 that he went and confessed his sin to the LORD. You know, it doesn’t say, and we don’t know,
that he ever confessed to Uriah’s family.
He evidently didn’t confess to Eliam, Bathsheba’s father or Ahithophel
Bathsheba’s grandfather, we’re going to see the trouble from that. David came to understand here that he has
sinned against the LORD. listen, ‘Thou shalt not kill [murder],
Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not Steal, Thou shalt not bear false
witness against thy neighbour, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, the
shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant,’ David broke
a whole series of the Ten Commandments, dismantled them. And David comes to realize here ‘What I’ve
done is I’ve sinned against God, that’s had repercussions in human lives.’ And by the way, I think when you betray
someone, if you’ve sinned against someone, you know, the New Testament gives us
instruction, you should go to your brother or sister, you should make it right,
and never go to them and say ‘I’m sorry,’ that doesn’t mean squat. You go to them and you say ‘Forgive me,’
that’s a vastly different thing to ask.
I’m sorry means nothing. Judas
Iscariot was sorry and hung himself. But
when you say “forgive me,” to someone, you’re owning the fact that you’ve
sinned. You’re saying something vastly
different, ‘please forgive me.’
And David here tells us, he says “I have sinned against the LORD.” It’s taken a
year. But the man is now broken, the man
is now repentant, he’s made confession, and as far as heaven is concerned, he’s
clean, there’s restoration. That has
nothing to do with all of the ramifications on the horizontal. It doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences, it
means that his heart is right with God.
God will say to Solomon, ‘Solomon, your heart is not perfect
towards me like the heart of your father David.’ Isn’t that interesting? Solomon 300 wives, 700 concubines, he let all
those wives build temples to their pagan gods all around Jerusalem. One thing David never did, is he never
changed [to other] gods, he worshipped his God, he fought giants in the
presence of his God, he gave victories in the presence of his God, he sinned in
the presence of his God, he failed in the presence of his God, and he repented
in the presence of his God, he never changed [to other] gods. And it was enough for the LORD,
that he could say to Solomon ‘Your heart is not perfect towards me like
the heart of your father David.’
David says “I have sinned against the LORD.”
he realizes it, against the LORD. Psalm 51, he would write it, ‘Against
thee, and thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight.’ “And Nathan said unto David, The LORD
also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die.” (verse 13b) That’s amazing. Because at the end of Psalm 51 he’s going to
say ‘Sacrifice and offering thou hast not desired,’ because there
was no sacrifice for adultery, and there was no sacrifice for murder. ‘But a broken and contrite spirit thou
wilt not despise,’ David realized that when repentance was real and
brokenness was real, that God would get back to work. In this world when something’s broken, we
throw it away. In God’s Kingdom when
something’s broken, that’s when he gets to work. He loves to get his hands on a broken man or
a broken woman. Because like the potter,
he can tear it down, and he can start over on the wheel, and he can bring
something out of it in beauty that people never would have dreamt or would have
understood, ever. ‘I have sinned
against the LORD.’ My
encouragement to you tonight would be, if you are in a situation, and it’s
secret, well it’s only secret to us, obviously the whole chapter’s telling you
it isn’t secret to him. All things are
open and naked before the one we have to do with. There’s nothing hidden before the eyes of the
LORD. And maybe you’re roaring inside. I would encourage you, get alone with God
tonight and say ‘Lord, I have sinned against you.’ Confession, John tells us ‘if we
confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to forgive us, and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness,’ confession, homologao, to say
the same thing. It isn’t to say ‘I’m
sorry,’ it’s to say what he says about adultery, to say what he says about
substance abuse, to say what he says about bitterness and about gossip, to say
what he says about those things, ‘Lord, I’ve been slandering this person,
and I’m wrong, your Word says it’s wrong, and I’m filled with bitterness, and
the root of bitterness in my life is defiling others, Lord, and there’s no
fruit of the Spirit in my life, there’s no love, joy, peace,
longsuffering.’ That’s confession,
to say the same thing God says about your sin.
And it says when we do that, listen, he’s faith, imagine that…[transcript
of a connective expository sermon on 2nd Samuel 11:6-27 and 2nd
Samuel 12:1-13, given by Pastor Joe Focht, Calvary Chapel of Philadelphia,
13500 Philmont Avenue, Philadelphia, PA,
19116] related
links: Psalm 32: https://unityinchrist.com/Psalms/Psalms31-32.htm
Audio
version: https://resources.ccphilly.org/detail.asp?TopicID=&Teaching=WED671 |