David's Fall Into Sin

If you were here last week, then you'll recall that I described

chapter 10 of 2 Samuel as being a chapter that got us ready

for chapter 11, because chapter 11 really should not have

happened.

Now, there was Nothing in chapter 10 in itself that demonstrated

a direct sin that would lead to an even greater sin that we now

find in chapter 11.

Rather, the situation of chapter 10 allowed for David's great

sin in this chapter.

None of chapter 10 was by David's doing, but he was put in

the position of going to war.

And this was the catalyst for what we now read in chapter 11.

Now, I'm sure that you've heard it said that you should never

meet your heroes.

And the thought behind this saying is that we will discover that

those whom we look up to will let us down because they are human.

And I've had this experience.

I had the opportunity to meet an American pastor and teacher that

I listened to every day on a podcast.

And I've read their theological commentaries and books

and I've even quoted them from this pulpit.

But I'm not going to tell you who it is, because I was at a two

day conference in Ballymena and I had the opportunity to speak

to them and I was so disappointed.

They just didn't want to talk to me.

They passed themselves, but just walked off to something else.

I simply wanted time to enjoy company with them.

I came away so sad and I came away so hurt.

But as I look back now, I realized that I had elevated this

person to a high platform.

And at the end of the day, they were just human, having traveled

however many miles it is from the States, with the jet lag of the

time zone and having to deliver five conference messages.

And so as such, they didn't care about me as much as I cared

about them.

And I say that because it's the same with David.

We herald David as the greatest king Israel has ever known.

We often quote what scripture says about him, that he was a man

after God's own heart.

He had that trusted and special relationship, and he was

the greatest of all the image bearers of who Jesus would be, as

David himself, the shepherd boy, was the great shepherd king

of Israel, pointing us to the greatest shepherd, Jesus Christ.

See, compared to Saul, who was before him, David was everything

that a king of Israel should be.

But we come to a passage where the David we know as the man after

the Lord's own heart falls into sin and into disgrace.

And so we maybe find it hard to balance a good opinion of him

because we have such a high opinion of him.

Yet here we have before us David's folly and his sin, and we

must learn from it.

We must ever be mindful of the words of the English Puritan, John

Bradford, who said, but there but for the grace of God goes John

Bradford.

Of course, we use it today by saying, there but by the grace of

God go I. Bradford was in prison and would eventually be martyred

on the 1st of July, 1555 because of his confession of the

reformed Protestant faith.

Before he was imprisoned, or before he sorry he was martyred and

he was imprisoned, he would hear the crowds jeer on the outside,

and he would hear them celebrate at the execution of a fellow

inmate.

And he would remind himself each time that it was only by God's

grace that he was preserved for that moment and from martyrdom

that day.

And so it is with this chapter.

Yes, we are going to be bitterly disappointed by perhaps

what we would describe as one of the heroes of Scripture.

But we shouldn't look on sin and we shouldn't gloat at it.

We must be mindful.

But by the grace of God go any of us.

For as much as we cannot save ourselves, so we cannot keep ourselves.

We cannot keep ourselves from sinning because the old self desires

to reappear in the sin that we will commit.

You see, we cannot keep ourselves in what John Calvin refers

to as the preservation of the saints.

It's only the Lord Jesus who can keep us and preserve us.

So we read this account with great care, but also with great awareness

of our need for God to keep and preserve us, just as we have

known throughout each generation.

And so verse one begins with the catalyst that we saw in chapter

ten.

In chapter nine, we understood that the land of Israel was secure

and it was at peace.

But the foolishness and the suspicions of the Ammonites led to

war with Israel, and that war should never have happened.

And as such, David was placed in the position to continue to war

with them.

And when the season, the spring for the season for war, which

was spring, came around, and that was a time of good dry weather,

because troops never went to war in the region.

Rainy season, as it would be called, because they would become

bogged down in the wet ground.

So it's in the spring, in the dry weather, that David sends out

his men to fight.

And when they left, David remained in Jerusalem on his own.

And this is when David's problems begin, because in verse

two, we are told it happened very matter of fact, late one afternoon

when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof

of the king's house that he saw from the roof a beautiful or

a woman bathing.

And the woman was very beautiful.

So on a warm Middle Eastern afternoon, David is tired and awakes

to see a beautiful woman across the way.

And David's immediate thought is one of possession.

He wants her and he lusts after her.

And so he asks about who she is.

And the report comes back in verse three that she is Bathsheba,

the wife of Uriah the Hittite who is serving in David's army.

David has now let down his guard.

No longer is this a sin that he can conceal because he has made

at least one person know of his interest in her.

And he still doesn't hold back any form of shame or care of David

is now gone.

And verses four and five set the scene.

So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him and

he lay with her.

Now she had been purifying herself from uncleanness.

That little line is thrown there to tell us of human anatomy

of the moment that it was in her life, where indeed she most likely

would have been the most fertile to conceive.

Then she returned to her house and the woman conceived.

And she sent and told David, I am pregnant.

David's sin action of committing adultery has far reaching

consequences and we see it here in him not only sleeping with

Bathsheba, but her then becoming pregnant.

And whether David thought this was going to be a quick fling in

the quiet months of war has led to great significance with news

of a conception of a baby.

And to get himself out of this mess, David devises a plan.

And verses 6 to 13 tell us of what that plan is and how it plays

out.

But it doesn't go the way that he wants.

His idea is to get Uriah home from war.

And being home, he will sleep with his wife and it will be believed

that the baby is his.

But there's one thing that David doesn't count on, and he doesn't

count on Uriah's integrity.

So now the wheels are set in motion as we read in verse 6.

So David sent word to Joab, send me Uriah the Hittite.

And Job sent Uriah to David.

David connives, that's the only word for it, a plan to get Uriah

home.

And it is under the guise of a report of how things are going with

the war.

Now Uriah is a very dutiful and loyal subject and he tells David

how everything is going and how the various people are doing.

But the key thing is for Uriah to go home.

David's not really interested.

He simply wants Uriah to go home to his wife.

So we read in verse 8 then David said to Uriah, go down to your

house and wash your feet.

And Uriah went out of the king's house and there followed him,

a present from the king.

Now David does everything he can to force a situation that will

get this unwanted pregnancy off his back.

He gifts Uriah something that I am sure was to encourage some form

of romantic relations with his wife.

But it doesn't work.

Uriah is a man of integrity.

And because the ark of the Lord has no house in which to dwell

and his brothers in arms are sleeping in tents on the battlefield,

he will not take the luxury of eating and drinking and sleeping

at home.

And this is admirable of Uriah as he puts the Lord and the nation

before himself.

And we've seen in scripture before how those with integrity can

suffer from consequences of someone else's sin.

And poor Uriah has no idea what is about to happen or why.

But because of David's sin, which has far reaching consequences,

he will lose his life.

And in verse 13 you can almost see one sense of David trying to

get him to go home one last time by getting him drunk.

Or perhaps David's guilt as he hatches another plan because David,

we read, invited him and he ate in his presence and drank so

that he made him drunk.

Was that drunkenness to get him home to sleep with his wife?

Or was it to give this man on death row one good last moment in

life?

But we're told that in the evening Uriah went out to lie on

his couch with the servants of his Lord, but he did not go down

to his house.

Whether this is, as I said, one last chance to get him to go

home or one last meal, a second plan is now put into motion

that David cannot stop.

Even in his drunken state, Uriah still is loyal to his true

king and his true lord.

And verse 15 says in the letter that David now sends sent

Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting and then draw back

from him that he may be struck down and die.

Oh, how David has fallen.

There is the sin of acting upon his lust, there is the sin of

the relations that he has with Bathsheba.

And now he is completely guilty of the death of another human

being.

You see, if Uriah won't go with the plan and sleep with his

wife, then he needs to be taken out of the picture altogether.

So David sends word to his chief of the military, Joab and gets

Joab to place Uriah on the front line.

And as a loyal subject, Joab does what he is told, knowing that

Uriah will surely die.

But Joab knows David and his ability to have outbursts.

And so after Uriah does indeed die in the battle, Joab sends a messenger

to confirm what happened in the battle.

And then Joab says to the servant, because he knows David,

in verses 20 and 21, if the king's anger rises, and if he says

to you, why did you go so near the city to fight?

Did you not know that they would shoot from the wall?

Who killed Abimelech, the son of Jerubbesheth?

Did not a woman cast an upper millstone on him from the wall so

that he died at Thebes?

Why did you go so near the wall?

Then you shall say your servant Uriah the Hittite, is dead

also.

So Joab plays out David's reaction and he makes a plan, thinking

that David might actually critique his battle strategy, using

an example from a previous blow to Israel's army at Thebes.

And that's recorded for us in Judges, chapter 9 and verses 50 to

Judges 9 · chapter mention

55, where there was a foolish tactic in the army that led to the

loss of life.

But you see, Joab's whole strategy was for David's command

that Uriah would be killed.

But Joab knows David, and this is what he prepares him with.

So the servant goes back to Jerusalem and tells David what has

happened and includes the information that Uriah is dead.

Now, David must have sensed Joab's uneasiness with the whole

plan, and so says to the messenger in verse 5, Thus shall

you say to 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.

And so, as much as it is supposed to encourage Joab, he is

involved in this extrajudicial killing.

It is also a command from David to get back to business, to

defending Israel and defeating the enemies.

And David is here directing the servant to convey to Joab how

positively the king has received his report.

And as you would expect, as word reaches Bathsheba, she grieves

over her husband.

She observes a period of mourning rites for anywhere from

seven to possibly 30 days.

And then, after which we're told in verse 27.

And when the mourning was over, David sent and brought her

to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son.

But the thing that the Lord has had, David had done displeased

the Lord.

So after what she was to do by right, that period of mourning, David

once more sent for her.

The last time he does so, and he brings her to his house, the palace

from which he has not moved.

Throughout this chapter, and to all of those around him, this

might seem like a thoughtful provision for the needs of a valiant

soldier's widow, a way to honor her husband in his service

of the nation.

But this is now plan number three, and David is once again putting

into motion a plan to save his own skin.

Not only will his child be his, but to the world it will be

legitimately his.

So Bathsheba becomes David's wife and subsequently bore him a

son.

For David, this seems to be the end of the story.

For David, crisis over.

However, notice how this chapter ends, and it's quite an ominous

note when the author, from his privileged standpoint, incorporates

the divine assessment of the affairs.

But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.

Displeased, literally, meaning was evil in the eyes, repeats the

formula that is found there in verse 25.

And so it could be read as the Lord regarded what DAV had done to

be evil.

Joab may have conspired in a cover up, but the Lord will not.

And he will have the final say, as we'll see in the next chapter.

So David, the greatest king of Israel, falls from his privileged

position into sin.

He lusts after another woman, the woman, another man.

He has relations with her that have very open consequences with

a pregnancy.

And David just falls further and further into sin.

And even though there may be those around him willing to cover

it up, the one who sees all our hearts truly sees and will not

ignore the sin that that is so apparent.

And so the applications of David's sin are obvious.

His tragic downfall proves that none of us are immune from temptation.

David's sin began with a neglect of duty and deepened through

the abuse of power.

So David's fall urges us to realize that indeed, sin is all around

us.

That's why one of those stanzas in the Lord's Prayer is lead

us temptation, but deliver us from evil.

A prayer that should be on the lips of every Christian at the start

of every day.

For the devil is cunning.

The devil is exactly as we know him to be, evil.

And he delights in nothing more than us falling deeper into

sin.

He sets the traps.

And here we see one set for David into which he falls.

And so as believers, we must pray.

We must pray for ourselves.

Jesus taught this not just in the Lord's Prayer, but also In Gethsemane,

in anguish, in Matthew 26:41, he says, watch and pray that you

Matthew 26:41

may not enter into temptation.

The Spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

And this is the night on which he was betrayed.

Knowing indeed that he wants his disciples to be with him in prayer,

that indeed their hearts would be encouraged.

Because Christ knew that the cup that he would have to bear would

be his.

And he was thinking of his followers, that they would not fall

into the temptation of the evil one.

So can I encourage you to pray for yourself?

Pray that line of the Lord's Prayer.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Can I encourage you to pray for each other, that God will keep

his people in this day?

And I don't ask you to do this, to do this exclusively for

me, but for all of those who are in Christian leadership.

Pray for them, because those are the ones who the devil goes after.

We have seen many a pastor and teacher fall into sin and left shipwreck

and ministries shipwrecked.

So do pray, I urge you.

The first thought on your day is one of battle, in which the Lord

will fight for you and he will preserve you from the temptations

of the evil one.

And so that's one application.

But the chief lesson of David's fall, however, is one designed

not to strengthen our own power against temptation and sin,

but rather to cast us on a greater power still.

And that is the saving grace of God in Jesus Christ.

Remember what we've just sung.

Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me

See, David's fall proves once and for all that true Christians

are capable of committing the most heinous sins.

But while David's sin would lead to a heavy temporal judgment

from God, God's covenant grace in Christ would prove stronger than

David's sin, forgiving him, restoring him and causing his mouth

to rejoice in the mercy of God through the blood of his son.

David's sin had in fact, placed Israel's king in the very

place where Uriah the Hittite had been before coming to God for

salvation.

Did you notice who he is?

He's not Uriah the Jew.

He's not Uriah the Israelite.

He's Uriah the Gentile.

He's a Hittite.

Did you ever pick that up?

He's not of the covenant community by birth.

And so he is an unholy Gentile, or he was an unholy Gentile.

He'd been an outcast from God's presence, left out by sin.

From every blessing of God's covenant.

Now we do not know how Uriah came to know and trust the Lord and

to be included in the covenant community.

But we do know the steps that David must take and that we must

take in order to be accepted by God and then consecrated to serve

as valiant Spirit.

Filled men and women are the same steps that Uriah took to demonstrate

here before us a man of integrity before the Lord.

And the first step is the confession of our sin and the appeal

to God's mercy.

Please do not fool yourself to say that you are without sin in writing

to the Christian church.

That is what we are told.

We sin, we sin in thought, we sin in deed, and we sin in word.

We all do it.

Do not be foolish to think you don't.

So therefore, as I confess my sin daily before the Lord, so you

must confess your sin and you must appeal to God's mercy.

That is the first step.

The second step is faith in the blood that Jesus shed for our

forgiveness.

And regardless of who you are here tonight, saved or unsaved, we

must look to the blood of Jesus because it is only that blood

that satisfies God's wrath against us so that we stand in Christ

and in him alone as the one in whom our sins are truly forgiven.

That's why we pray.

Look not on us, but look on us as found in him.

Because it is only in Christ that our sins can be forgiven.

And the third step is to surrender our lives in faith to the

service and worship of God.

This is the path that every sinner must take.

A path that I have taken and a path that I must continue to take

each day as I am confronted by the temptations of the evil one.

And just as you are confronted by the temptations of the evil one.

This is a path that God has promised will lead us to reconciliation,

to restoration, and to eternal life.

As John writes in First John 1, verse 9, if we confess our sins,

1 John 1:9

he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse

us from all unrighteousness.

David was truly a great king for Israel.

And not only has his greatness been seen, but his greatness will

be seen again.

As we go into these next chapters, we will see a wonderful

mercy from God that demonstrates to us how good God is

and how patient he is and how he truly is a God of steadfast love

because he has given us the true King of His people.

It is not King David, it is King David.

And as we have the echoes of this morning coming to our Ears.

For those who heard that sermon, the answer still comes tonight.

Is Jesus your true king?

Do you know him as the only one who can save you because he shed

his blood?

Because this is what we all need to know.

We need to pray that we will not fall into temptation.

But we must also pray that indeed Christ will save us and make

us eternally his.

So please do not jeer or rejoice in the sin of other people

or their fall.

For there but by the grace of God, goes any of us.

Rather, look to the Lord.

Let prayer be your defense each day.

Pray that you will not and those around you will not, and that

Christian leaders will not fall into sin and the temptation

of sin, but rather will live faithfully and pray that you will

know the goodness of God, the forgiveness of sins and life eternal.

This is God's word to each of us.

A difficult passage because of its language, its meaning, but also

how it confronts us.

It tells us to turn from sin because no sin is hidden from God.

And we will see how this plays out, as the writer says.

But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.

The Lord will not be taken for a fool.

And we will see the judgment that will fall on David because of

this sin.

But an even greater judgment if we remain outside of the kingdom

because we reject the true King of our lives.

So come to him, trust in him.

And as our closing praise will tell us to know his mercy is more

stronger than darkness.

New every morn our sins, they are many, but his mercy is more.

Let us pray.

Our Father God, we thank you for what it means to know your mercy.

Your mercy is giving us what we do not deserve.

For you keep us from eternal punishment, but all because of Jesus.

But it is not by right of birth.

It is not by right of culture.

It is only by believing and trusting in Christ and in him alone.

So Father, may we respond to your mercy.

That indeed we will know its great strength, its freshness to

us every day, and that indeed it will truly lead us home.

So speak to us and draw us to yourself.

We pray in Jesus name.

Amen.

Sam.