Bulletin Articles
“Who Is It Really Hurting?”
Categories: Iron sharpens iron“There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.”
(2 Samuel 12.1-4)
This was God’s way of telling David that he’d committed a grievous sin. In the previous chapter of 2 Samuel, David had stayed home while his armies went to war, and in his newfound leisure had faced the otherwise unlikely scenario of happening on the scene of a beautiful woman bathing. He found out who she was, sent for her, slept with her, impregnated her, and then attempted to cover it up by calling her husband back from the front lines. When Uriah refused to cooperate by enjoying himself at home while his brothers-in-arms risked their lives and slept in tents, David sidestepped the issue by having him deliberately killed in battle. In the process, many more Israelite soldiers died.
In just a few days, David went from a seemingly harmless act of voyeurism, to adultery, coverup, conspiracy, manslaughter, and murder—and this list could surely be expanded to include more sins committed in pursuit of the others. How could the man after God’s own heart do all this (1Sa 13.14)? It was more than a momentary lapse of self-control. There were off-ramps available to him at every point along this descent into sin, disorder, death, and misery—but he refused to take any of them, and just kept forging ahead into the abyss.
In the first place, assuming it was an accident that he stumbled upon the lurid scene, he first chose to indulge the lust in his heart, likely on the grounds that it had never caused a problem before. After all, God created this feminine beauty, and it ought to be appreciated, even celebrated! Then, he sent for her, perhaps rationalizing that he just wanted to be in the presence of this beautiful lady, who was left alone when her husband went off to war—the poor thing! Of course, deep down, he had “already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt 5.28), but some harmless flirtation is surely no big deal.
As they say, one thing led to another, and while he probably thought later, I shouldn’t have done that, it seemed like the whole affair was past, until Bathsheba’s message arrived several days later: “I am pregnant” (2Sa 11.5). Well, now you’re in a pickle, aren’t you, David? Her husband has been away for some time, and when he discovers his wife’s pregnancy he’ll be, understandably, upset. Then the whole thing will be out in the open, and David will look like a rotten, licentious pig—an apt description of the facts, but that’s no reason for the people to know it!
What a disaster! How to get out of this mess of his own making? Aha! Why not call Uriah home, on the double, and let him sleep with his wife, too? The birth will seem a little early, but not suspiciously so. In a way, giving him this child was a blessing, if you ignore the cuckoldry. When Uriah’s sense of duty kept him from visiting his wife in the middle of a campaign, David was afforded yet another opportunity to come clean. But no—now he was deeply invested in the coverup. How much worse would it look, if everyone found out he not only fooled around with his neighbor’s wife, but was planning to dupe her husband into raising David’s child? How could he ever face Uriah? How could he face the nation? How could pretend to have any moral authority, when this is how he himself behaved? Think of God’s people! They’ve been through so much under the judges and King Saul, and just as things were getting better, this happens? Oh no, for the good of the nation, he simply must keep it quiet!
But how? Well, Uriah’s a soldier; he deliberately risks his life to fight the Lord’s battles on a regular basis. Oh, if only his name could appear on the list of those killed in action, during the next battle! That would solve everything! Well, you know…
David’s loyal servants obeyed his orders, and soon Uriah was killed, and David’s problem seemed to be dead, as well. He surely breathed a sigh of relief that it was finally over, and then moved on with his life—with the noble gesture of taking Uriah’s widow into his own household being first on the list of things to do. Of course, when Nathan told David the parable with which we began, David immediately saw the problem, and passed harsh judgment: “the man who has done this deserves to die” (2Sa 12.5). Then, when “Nathan said to David, ‘You are the man!’” (2Sa 12.7), David despised himself and repented in shame and humiliation (Ps 51). God forgave his sin, adding it to the list of offenses for his own Son to carry to the cross; but he also imposed temporal consequences, including the implosion of David’s household, and the death of the child conceived in sin.
If Nathan had, instead, approached David as he gazed on Bathsheba’s beautiful body, and foretold what would be the consequences of acting out his heart’s desire, do you think he still would have summoned her? We don’t know. He may well have done everything exactly the same, always telling himself he would stop short of the next evil step. But it’s clear that even his first mistake, indulging his lustful thoughts, was far from harmless. “Flee from sexual immorality” (1Co 6.18).
Jeremy Nettles
