II Samuel 11:1-27 – Kingly Distraction
The Living Word With Chuck Davis
II Samuel 11:1-27 – Kingly Distraction
"Welcome to the Living Word with Chuck Davis" 2 Samuel 11, 1-27 - Kingly Distraction In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab in his servants with him in all Israel, and they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Raba, but David remained at Jerusalem. It happened late one afternoon when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, and he saw from the roof a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful. David sent and inquired about the woman, and once said, "Is not this Bathsheba the daughter of Ileum, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness. Then she returned to her house, and the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, "I am pregnant." So David sent word to Joab, "Send me Uriah the Hittite," and Joab sent Uriah to David. When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab was doing and how the people were doing and how the war was going. Then David said to Uriah, "Go down to your house and wash your feet." Uriah went out of the king's house, and there followed him a present from the king. But Uriah slept at the door of the king's house, with all the servants of his Lord, and did not go down to his house. When they told David, " Uriah did not go down to his house," David said to Uriah, "Have you not come from a journey? Why did you not go down to your house?" Uriah said to David, "The ark in 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 the Lord, but he did not go down to his house. In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and said it by hand to Uriah, 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 near the city to fight, did you not know that they would shoot from the wall?'" Joab killed Abimalek, the son of Girupasheth, did not a woman cast an upper meal stone on him from the wall so that he died at the bez. "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 archer 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 displease 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 then when the morning 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 displease the Lord." The beginning of this passage is a very sad line for me. "In the spring when kings are out to battle, David remained in the palace in Jerusalem. David's board, he was meant to be a warrior. We're going to see a progression of sin in his life. It begins with sight, moves to lust, moves to inquiry, fantasy, greed. He then takes what he wants, and he lays with Uriah's wife. He uses many steps. He sends many people to accomplish, to be accomplices in this. There are consequences in this. He attempts to escape, and so he plots and schemes. He brings Uriah back from the front. Uriah proves to be much more of a loyal person than David. This progression, it's going to leave David in a bad place, and eventually he moves from being an adulterous to a murderer. The news comes back from the battlefront. Uriah's wife laments, and some people would say, "Why was she lamenting? She had been with the king. She didn't have a choice. David could have anything he wanted in the kingdom." She was just a pawn in David's game. This final line, "The thing that David had done displeased the Lord." Eugene Peterson in his commentary on David's life basically says there are two tests of David that become defining moments in his life. With Goliath, David is yet unknown. He's young, and he's untested, but he has a God-focused. With Bathsheba, David is now well-known, mature, and tested, but he's bored. I would say this. He has anemia of soul. We get to see the way Eugene Peterson says it, that Uriah's moral restraint is an implicit rebuke to David's moral indulgence. The soul lot of this passage is pretty clear. There's a slow progression of sin. I think of James's words in the first chapter of his letter, but each person is tempted when he is learned and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it is conceived, his birth to sin, and sin, when he's fully grown, brings forth death. Interestingly, it's a spiritual death that James is referring to, but David's sin brings death to other people. The now what of the passage is a reminder of the importance of early detection and separation. You might call it the Joseph principle of the Old Testament, that when opportunities before him, he flees and runs in the other direction. As a Lord today, we know that we're on different levels and phases and progressions and moving towards destruction. Lord, help us to recognize early steps and to separate from that. Empower us by your spirit. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.