Bathsheba

Reading from the Word of our Lord, uh Matthew 1, 1 through 6.

The book of genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah, and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez, and Zerah by Tamar, and Peres the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, and Ram the father of Aminidah, and Amineda the father of Nashan, and Nashan the father of Salmon, and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Bohaz the father of Obed by Bruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the king, and David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Alrighty.

Wow, what an act to follow.

How did we ever do this without Jack?

Naf?

That was I mean he they he just brought it.

That was amazing.

It was like watching like uh Queen at LiveAid or something.

It was like it's one of those performances where it's like this is gonna go down in history.

So thanks for thanks for joining us this morning.

Um I went uh actually I went and got more coffee because I was like, if I'm gonna follow that, I'm gonna need to I'm gonna need to bring a little more a little more energy.

So thanks for joining us.

Uh we've got uh this is our our our last uh kind of kind of our last uh time in the genealogy in Matthew.

Although next week we're really staying in the genealogy because the story that we're going to look at next week is, of course, Mary's story and uh the the birth of Jesus.

And so we'll see how the way that we follow this genealogy really all flows to Jesus and to Mary at the end of this, at the end of this genealogy.

So here we are in the middle of Advent, uh, or towards the end of Advent, actually, and um we remember that Advent is a time of both looking back to Christ's first coming and looking forward to his second coming.

So with the same anticipation that we see it build in Scripture towards the birth of Christ, we share in that same sort of anticipation as we look forward to Christ's second coming and the consummation of the renewal that Christ has accomplished that will come with his second coming.

So it is a time of looking back and an assurance of God's faithfulness to his promises that we see in Christ's first coming.

And then we take that assurance and we look forward, knowing that all will be made right in him.

So, with that, let's pray and we'll we'll move into our story for today.

Holy Father, we thank you for uh the worship of you and hearing that come out of the mouths of our children, Lord.

What a joy and a blessing.

Lord, we praise you that you meet us in this Advent season and that you uh are a sure hope that we look forward to, and that just as certainly as you have come and that you took on flesh and you took on a true body and a reasonable soul, Lord, and just as surely as you went to the cross and you were resurrected, we look forward to your coming again.

We trust your promise that you are with us now, as you promise to be with us always, even to the end of the age.

Lord, we look with hope towards the end of the age, towards the culmination of your work of redemption being made complete.

But Lord, now we long, we long for that.

And we pray alongside the scriptures, come, Lord Jesus.

We list this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So this advent, we've been looking at Matthew's genealogy.

And so if you just heard Tom read the list of names uh after lighting the love candle, which he does every week anyway, there's a when he read the list of names, that we um uh it can sound just like, okay, this is just like a word salad, you know, this is what does this mean?

What is the meaning in this uh genealogy?

And you know, there's a lot of threads.

But there's a there's an initial there's an initial meaning that I want us to see throughout this series, which is that when when God took on flesh, when the Son of God became man, he became fully man.

And in becoming fully man, that means he takes on all aspects of humanity.

The Son of God did not just spawn somewhere in the desert, as I've been saying, but he was born of a woman, and he has a lineage, just like all of us.

Every human comes from other humans.

And so Jesus Christ, in his story, takes on the fullness of humanity, and that means he takes on the fullness of the lineage that led to him.

He is fully man.

Now, Matthew, therefore, begins his genealogy or begins his gospel with a genealogy.

And there are lots of threads that we could pick up in Matthew's genealogy where we could see different layers of meaning in what Matthew is communicating to us about who Jesus is.

But the thread that we've picked up this Advent is Matthew's inclusion of four women in his genealogy.

The pattern of the genealogy is that became the father of, became the father of, became the father of.

And then four times that pattern is interrupted with the inclusion of these four women.

And so the question is: why the inclusion of these four women?

What is it about them in particular that Matthew saw fit to include them in the genealogy of our Lord?

Because Matthew is not just, he's not just a census taker.

He's not interested in raw data for raw data's sake.

He is teaching us about Jesus and about how we ought to understand Jesus' story through the story of his genealogy and where it is that he came from.

What's interesting about them is uh there are lots of women that weren't included.

We don't see Rebecca, we don't see Sarah, we don't see Leah, these women who we have these great stories of in scripture.

And yet these four women in particular are included in Matthew's genealogy.

Why these four?

Well, the four are Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba.

And what I've been saying as these sort of themes that unite their four stories is that they are all four Gentile women.

So they are not Jewish women by birth.

They are all Gentile women, and they all intervene at a critical moment in Israel's history in order to preserve the line that leads to Jesus or to preserve the kingdom itself.

So these are the these are Gentile women who intervene in Israel's history to preserve the line of the king or to preserve the kingdom itself.

Now, what we're going to find this morning is that about one of those things, I've been wrong this whole time.

So I'm sorry.

But we'll stick around and you'll find out about which one of those things I was wrong about.

So let's look at today we're looking at the story of Bathsheba.

So let's look at Bathsheba in the genealogy.

Matthew 1, 5 through 6.

It says, and Sammon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the king, and David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.

So the first thing to notice about Bathsheba is that she's not named.

Bathsheba is the wife of Uriah.

David, the father of Solomon, by the wife of Uriah.

Now the wife of Uriah is this famous woman, Bathsheba.

So David is not the father of Solomon.

It is not said in the genealogy that he is the father of Solomon by his own wife, but she is named the wife of Uriah.

Now, why is it that she isn't named explicitly, but instead she's referred to as the wife of Uriah?

I think it's something like to say otherwise, perhaps to Matthew, would have been to gloss over this sin of David.

To name her as merely carrying on the line of David is different than what's happening because she's not merely carrying on the line of David.

There's a sense in which she's carrying along the line of Uriah.

And there's a sense in which David is carrying along the line of Uriah, her Bathsheba's husband.

Now, Uriah, just as a quick refresher, it's a famous story.

But uh Uriah was Bathsheba's husband, and he was one of David's 33 mighty men.

And while David's men were away at war, David remained back at the palace, and he saw Bathsheba bathing on the rooftop, and he called him, he called her to himself, and he took her for himself, and she conceived and bore a child.

And in order to cover up his affair, he attempted to have your have Uriah come back from war and stay with his wife, so that it might be covered up that the child was actually from David.

But Uriah was too honorable a man to be deceived by David in such a way.

And because of Uriah's honor and David's desire to cover his tracks, he has Uriah murdered on the front lines by the enemy, and he takes Bathsheba for himself as his wife.

This is one of the great sins in Scripture and one of the great scandals of all the kingdom.

And so the genealogy, perhaps in an effort to not gloss over the murder of Uriah as a de as a detail in this, names Bathsheba, describes Bathsheba as the wife of Uriah in the genealogy.

Now, it's time for me to correct a bit of a a bit of a mistake with regards to how I've been describing these four women.

Bathsheba is not a Gentile.

Now, I thought Bathsheba was a Gentile because she's described in this uh verse as the wife of Uriah.

And Uriah is a Gentile.

Uriah is a Hittite.

And so I thought that you're that she was also a Hittite, and there's there's some reason to think that.

Though the reason is, if you're interested, that uh here's a here's a here's a wrong way to think about it.

Here's my wrong interpretation that I went with at first, that I based this whole sermon series on until until now.

So the uh uh the w do you remember in the story, Nathan the prophet comes to David and he tells David this story of a man who owned a young lamb, and he had raised this lamb up from it uh since it was a you know baby lamb, uh, and it was like a member of his household, and then a rich man comes and takes this young lamb from the poor man uh uh for for himself, even though the rich man had plenty and had no need of stealing from the poor man in that way.

Okay, so that's an analogy for the the poor man is Uriah, the lamb is Bathsheba, and I thought raised up from youth, Uriah is a Hittite, they were raised together.

See, it's not crazy.

And so Bathsheba is uh Bathsheba would be a Hittite then.

That would make that would make sense.

But as it turns out, if you read the Bible, uh Bathsheba's genealogy is given to us.

We're given a genealogy of Bathsheba.

You gotta do a little, it takes a little doing.

Uh but you can you can piece it together and figure out um Bathsheba's genealogy, and she is uh she's a Jew.

She's an Israelite.

And so there's sort of this interesting uh dynamic then, and I'm gonna try and kind of see what I'm gonna do here is that thing where I say I was wrong, but but I I still think I may uh it makes sense.

Because the one who's mentioned in the genealogy is Uriah the Hittite, and he is the Gentile.

So I think that there still is this narrative element throughout the genealogy that has to do with these four women that act as a function of bringing the Gentiles into the kingdom, so that as we follow the genealogy throughout the whole story, we see that Jesus must be a king of all.

He is not just a king of the Jews, but he is a king of the Jews and of the Gentiles.

He is a king of all.

And that narrative thread, I think, still holds, especially because the one woman who's mentioned who is a Jew, the way that she's mentioned is as the wife of Uriah, who is a Gentile.

See what I did there?

I submit this for your deliberation or whatever.

So what we see, there's this other dynamic, I think, that comes that comes out when we see this story of Bathsheba.

Bathsheba's life is a story of almost unimaginable hardship, which we'll look at throughout the whole course of her life.

At least after the event with David.

There's this pattern, and in David's life too, after that event, there's this pattern of of almost unthinkable hardship and and particular family pressures that we'll look at, and and they make her shine, her faith shines, it's it's remarkable.

But I think seeing this pattern in Bathsheba's life, of this incredible hardship, it caused me to reflect back on the other women in this story, uh the other women that we've looked at in the genealogy, and I think that there's something like this at play in the story of these four women.

These four women's lives contained in the genealogy are something like this.

They are a cry for the true husband.

That their lives represent this.

The true husband isn't here.

And the shape of it takes place over the course of their lives.

Tamar is the one whose uh her first two husbands die, and then she is withheld from the husband that she had the right to marry.

And then only by deception is she, in a sense, able to participate in the true husband.

But we could say Judah, the one through whom the line comes, was no true husband.

Rahab is a prostitute.

This is uh uh an understanding that we have of her from the from reading the scriptures, but there is not much made of that detail.

So why the inclusion of this detail?

Well, there's something like her life itself is a demonstration that there is no true husband.

There is no true husband for her.

And when the true husband arrives, which is something like Israel to her, then she works for that true husband's arrival and makes it happen.

Ruth's story is, of course, the story of a lost husband, and then the arrival of this true husband in Boaz.

And here in Bathsheba's story, she loses the good husband, Uriah.

And she receives David, who, as a husband to her, is, you know, medium.

I should say it didn't start in the best way.

It's not as rom-commie as uh Ruth and Boaz.

Ruth and Ruth and Boaz, that's just like a that's like, you know, Julia Roberts and what's the guy, the British guy?

It's Grant, Hugh Grant.

Yeah.

It's like Notting Hill.

Um that is not the case for Bathsheba's story.

It is a it is a cry for the true husband.

And we see that that is fulfilled in Jesus.

That Jesus comes as the true husband for the true bride, which is his church.

And he does not take from her, he lays himself down on her behalf.

And then he raises her up to be seated with him in the heavenly places.

He is the true husband.

And the cry of these women's stories for that is find its the fullness of its meaning in the story of Jesus.

So let's look together at Bathsheba's story.

This will take some this will take bear with me.

We're gonna have to do some Bible study to see this.

There's there's gonna be a there's four names.

That's a lot of names.

Four names.

Only uh really only Bathsheba and David, those are like the only familiar names that we're gonna deal with.

So I have a graphic that we'll look at soon.

It's not really a graphic, it's just a list of names.

All I'm saying is bear with me.

And we'll do because when I ex I I saw I got really excited about this when I saw it, and then I explained it to my wife late one evening, and she was like, okay.

And I was like, I'm gonna need a graphic, aren't I?

And she was like, Yeah.

That's too many names.

So let's start Bathsheba's story here with David's inquiry about her after having spotted her from the rooftop.

David the king.

2 Samuel 11, 3.

And David sent and inquired about the woman, and one said, Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Elium, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?

Now, this famous inquiry of David, of course, comes when he is on the palace rooftop and he spots Bathsheba bathing, and he sees that she is beautiful, and so he asks the men of his court, Who is this that is bathing?

And they answer in this way that's kind of strange, right?

Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Elium, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?

Now, it's one of the details of this story that I think is perplexing until we start to understand the dynamic between Bathsheba and her time in the court of David, which her genealogy exposes to us.

They ask David, they they phrase their answer to David in a question Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?

That means that they expect David to respond, Yes, it is, isn't it?

They expect him to be able to say, Yes, I do know who that is.

Don't I?

Because David, it's almost unthinkable that David would not have known who Bathsheba is.

Now, why is it almost unthinkable that David would not have recognized Bathsheba?

Well, here we see that she is the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah.

So who is Elium?

Elium was one of David's 33 mighty men.

These 33 men were his best warriors.

They were something like his personal bodyguard.

And they gathered around him when he was still in the wilderness, still being pursued by Saul, and they become his closest bodyguard.

Many of them are, some of them, like Eliam, are Jews.

Others, like Uriah, are Gentile converts who just become sort of like a pack of this band.

There was something just like incredibly attractive about David, where just the all these stragglers come together and is like he's it's really it's Robin Hood, okay?

It's the same as Robin Hood.

It's exactly the same.

Because there's a bad king and he's a rebel, but he's a good rebel.

And then this pack of men, I don't know about the tithes, but there's this pack of men.

Who all gather together in the wilderness like it's the it's the same.

Okay, so she is the daughter of one of David's closest companions in the wilderness from the from those wilderness years.

And Eliam and David would have been about the same age.

And she is the wife of Uriah.

Now Uriah was also one of David's 33 mighty men.

He was probably one of the youngest of them.

And Uriah was a Hittite.

And that means that he is a convert.

So who converted him?

David.

David is not just a king.

He is the shepherd of Israel.

He is these people's pastor.

He's the great psalmist of Israel.

And so when he meets this young man, Uriah the Hittite, he certainly discipled him and brought him in and taught him the ways of God.

And he is brought into these 33 mighty men by and under the leadership of David.

33 is not that much.

You know 33 people.

You'd be known by them.

So there's one more connection for Bathsheba.

Seeing that she is the daughter of Elium, this means that she is the granddaughter of Ahithophel.

I know.

Okay.

This is where Megan was like, it's too late.

So Ahithophel is David's chief military strategist.

So Ahithophel, it is said that the words of Ahithophel to David were like the very words of God to him.

Such this is how excellent of a military strategist Ahithophel was.

If there's no Ahithophel, the great conquering of David does not happen.

So he's this older man, likely in his 70s.

His son Eliam is one of he's David's chief military strategist.

His son Eliam is one of David's personal bodyguards, close companions.

They all like live around the court of the king together.

And likely after David just became king and moves to Jerusalem, that puts the timing for Bathsheba to have just been born when David becomes king.

So she is raised in the court of David.

Her grandfather is his chief advisor.

Her father is one of his mighty men.

And then imagine Eliam.

He says, You know what?

You should marry Bathsheba.

You're not an Israelite, but you, your character, you are a truer Israelite than any of us.

And think of what that meant among the 33 mighty men.

Eliam, this sort of like one of the older ones, he's David's age, has this young daughter, marries her to his brother in arms, Uriah the Hittite.

And think of the pride of the community.

It must have been the most obvious marriage ever.

And who, who, how couldn't everyone would have been a part of that marriage?

David would have been a part of it.

Ahithophel, the grandfather, would have been a part of that marriage.

The whole community would have seen this and said, this is a perfect union.

This is what Israel is meant to be like.

We love one another, we we love one another in such a way, we desire to become family with one another.

This great man I get to marry, Iliam might say, Can you believe that Bathsheba would marry a man like Uriah, who would fight alongside of us for this kingdom?

Even though he wasn't born in this, he sees the greatness of Israel and the greatness of God in what we are doing here with David.

And so you can see there's this sort of like, it's beautiful.

It's a beautiful time that they would have had together.

So that means that Bathsheba is raised in the court of David.

Why is her house right there?

Because she's the inner ring.

She would have been raised hearing David, the psalmist, seeing her father and grandfather become wise under the teaching of David because he has the spirit and is being given the very words of God that we read today as the very words of God.

She would have grown up seeing that.

It's likely that David held her as a child.

When you see how few people there are, you know what it's like to be a community like this.

You guys know what it's like to be a community like this.

Like when I see the kids up on the stage, it's like I've I've probably held all of them at one point.

And that's what it that's what it was like.

Okay, so Bathsheba is raised in the court.

Her family is is entwined with with David.

And so they respond to David's question: is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?

Do you hear it now?

Are you blind?

It's a type of blindness that must be deliberate.

Okay, so now here's my first mistake with Bathsheba was um that uh uh I thought she was a Gentile, and she's not.

My second is from when I preached this story years ago, and I I misread what happened with her and David.

And so let's bring some clarity to that now.

The Bible does not hide rape.

We know this because the story immediately following the story of David and Bathsheba records the rape of Tamar, one of David's daughters, by uh Amnon, one of David's other sons.

And her resistance to David is recorded explicitly.

Excuse me, her resistance to Amnon, Tamar's resistance to Amnon, see, too many names.

And not that Tamar, by the way.

This is another Tamar.

This is a long time after the first Tamar we looked at in our genealogy.

The um so we see the Bible record her resistance to that happening.

And the last time that I had preached through this, I'd read through that and thought we don't see any record of Bathsheba's resistance to David.

It seems like there's something like consent here.

But when we understand Bathsheba's history, when we understand her genealogy and where she would where she was raised, I think what we see is that I when I had preached through this first, I think I had adopted this secular sex ethic of consent.

And we see that there's nothing like that is possible in this dynamic because she is raised in the court of David.

She has seen him teach her grandfather and her father and her husband.

Of David, it is said he is like the very angel of God to us.

And he was.

He has the very words of God to these people.

David himself has many wives.

And how simple could he have gained consent from Bathsheba?

It's not like Bathsheba has her own Torah, you know, with like a pink leather case that she goes to the coffee shop and reads and puts highlights in and stuff.

The word of God that she has is from David.

It's from David.

So he calls her in.

He could have said one thing.

It's not adultery with me.

Look at all the wives that the Lord has given me.

I am the king.

This is all mine.

Is your husband, is your father, is your grandfather, are these not my subjects?

Is this not all mine?

And so we have no resistance recorded.

But when it's so easy to, when when we understand where she is in this dynamic and where David is in this dynamic, resistance is almost impossible to imagine.

And so make no mistake, although the although there may have been something like consent, when we understand the dynamic of this, make no mistake, this is rape.

So Bathsheba conceives and comes to David and tells him that she is with child, and David tries to trick Uriah into uh going back to be with his wife so that his tracks might be covered.

Uh Uriah is too honorable, so David has Uriah murdered.

Once Uriah is murdered, then he brings in Bathsheba and marries her.

Their first child dies seven days after being born, and they conceive a second son together named Solomon.

Solomon is reported by Nathan to be the beloved of the Lord.

The son that Bathsheba and David conceive is told by Nathan the prophet to Bathsheba and David, this one is the beloved of the Lord.

Now, I think Bathsheba listens to Nathan the prophet.

Now, why does she listen to Nathan the prophet so well?

Well, Nathan in all the kingdom is the only one who advocated for her.

He is the only one who had the courage to stand up to David and make plain his sin.

Nathan comes to David and he tells the story of the sheep that I told earlier.

And he says, You are the rich man who took from the poor man when you had no right to.

And David is convicted and he repents.

He truly repents.

And yet, for God and for David, it it was.

So Nathan is the one who's who confronts David.

And so Nathan tells Bathsheba, this same prophet, this child is the beloved of the Lord.

And this same announcement is given to David, and this is recorded in 1 Chronicles.

And this is the recording in 1 Chronicles is actually David sharing it with Solomon, what they had been told about Solomon.

They had been told this, 1 Chronicles 22, 9, behold, a son shall be born to you, who shall be a man of rest.

I will give him rest from all his surrounding enemies, for his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quiet to Israel in his days.

Bathsheba is the mother of the promised one.

And as the mother of the promised one, she takes on the very wisdom of Eve.

And what is Eve's wisdom?

She is the one who has the promise from God that the one who will crush the serpent will come from you.

Look for the sun.

And Bathsheba, like Eve before her, looks for the sun.

She has this promise from Nathan.

This is the sun.

This is the promised sun.

And the rest of Bathsheba's life, I think, is inexplicable if we don't understand that she lived by faith, trusted the promise of God, and looked towards the sun.

This is the true righteousness of Bathsheba shown.

Because let's look at the dynamic that she would then experience.

So Nathan the prophet comes to David after this great sin, and he says, You're forgiven, your sin has been set away from you.

But war will never leave your house.

And this thing which you have done in private will be done against you publicly from your own family.

And war never left David's house after this.

The first 20 years of David in Jerusalem is, you know, Ahithophel, Eliam, David kicking back, wow, it's so great that your daughter married Uriah.

Uriah is such a great guy.

Things like that.

The last 20 years of life in David's house, nobody can trust anybody.

You have no idea when the rebellion is going to come and who it's going to come from.

Families devour one another in the last 20 years of David's in David's house.

So the first thing that happens after David murders Uriah and has the affair with Bathsheba is Absalom, David's son, launches a rebellion against David.

And it almost works.

Now there's this question: why does it almost work?

David is this great military leader.

Well, when you read through the story, you realize it's a competition between advisors.

That's the way the story is shaped.

Not as David's heroism, but as a competition between which side has the best advisor.

And do you know what advisor Absalom has?

Ahithophel.

Ahithophel, the one to David, David's chief military strategist, whose words were like the very words of God to David, the grandfather of Bathsheba.

Why does Ahithophel want to overthrow the throne of David?

We don't understand until you see this is the grandfather of Bathsheba.

David is the one who murdered his son-in-law.

Who raped his granddaughter.

Oh, he would see to it that David's throne would be taken down.

So Absalom has this ace in the hole, Ahithophel, the greatest military mind of the time.

And they only win by deceiving Ahithophel by another military strategist.

That it's a cool story, you can read it on your own time.

But we're already going long.

There's a lot to cover here.

So now let's imagine that dynamic from Bathsheba's perspective.

Bathsheba is married to David.

She has the promised son with David.

And her grandfather is trying to murder and destroy her husband in the dynasty that comes from them and overthrow the son of promise.

And at least in part, we can understand why he is trying to do this.

Bathsheba would be able to see, at least in part, as an act of vengeance for me.

And Ahithophel must have been thinking, why is Bathsheba not joining with this?

Does she not see what we're trying to accomplish on her behalf?

Do you see how that's just in the dynamic?

Can you imagine when Bathsheba would think back on the time when Ahithophel and Eliam and David and Uriah were friends, and she was a part of that, and she lived peacefully in the court, and they looked forward to the joy that was to come.

And now she is the wife of David.

And her own grandfather is trying to overthrow her and her dynasty.

Her position is the pressure and the turmoil and the horror of the position that she was in.

It's inexplicable.

And we must have.

How could she have explained why she was staying with David?

How could she have explained why?

There's one explanation.

She looked towards the promised son.

And she said, I would be willing to lay down my life, the family that I had had, all that I had had, I will be willing to lay down for the sake of this promised son.

Because I look in hope.

I look in hope.

That yes, there is a catastrophe of this world that I'm in right now.

But she is able to look past that in hope towards the promise.

The faith of Bathsheba is incredible.

At the end of David's life, he is lying on his deathbed, and another one of his sons seeks to take the throne by force.

And this son's name is Adonijah.

And when Nathan, the prophet, hears that Adonijah is trying to take the throne by force for himself, where does he go but to Bathsheba?

I love to imagine Nathan in Bathsheba's relationship.

I think it's likely that that, how is it possible that Bathsheba and David were to were to be together?

Probably Nathan.

I think that's the only explanation.

It was probably Nathan, the prophet, who was able to rebuke David and who was able to honor Bathsheba, and who could set his hope and help them set their hope on this future promise that the Lord had given them in this son Solomon.

So Nathan comes to Bathsheba in 1 Kings 11 through 12.

Then Nathan said to Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon, Have you not heard that Adonijah, the son of Haggath, has become king, and David our Lord does not know it.

Now therefore come, let me give you advice that you may save your own life and the life of your son Solomon.

He sees what's happened.

Nathan goes straight to Bathsheba, and they hatch a plan.

And their plan is, Bathsheba, you go in and tell David what Adonijah is doing, and you remind David of the promise regarding Solomon.

And you remind him that God gave this promise regarding Solomon, and David gave this promise that Solomon would be king to you, Bathsheba.

Remind him of that.

And when you're doing that, all walk in later and all say the same thing.

So they have this plan.

Now you'll you'll there's this pattern through scripture.

Esther does this with Mordecai and Esther, they do this, where there's a king, and we need to inform the king's will, but we need to do it in such a way that we can, because he's the king.

And the way that you do that is uh you make a little play.

And so that's what they do.

They write out a script and they make a they make a play.

Esther does this.

This is what um uh Rebecca does for uh Jacob.

And Esau with the cooking of the food so that Jacob gets the right blessing.

You got to go in to Isaac, and if you remember the story, there's too many names.

I shouldn't have given another example.

I apologize.

So they hatch a plan.

And David responds.

David responds.

In 1 Kings 1:30, as I swore to you by the Lord, the God of Israel, saying, Solomon your son shall reign after me, and he shall sit on my throne in my place, even so I will do this day.

1 Kings 1:30

By a hair's breadth, the kingdom almost passes to the wrong son, to the son who was not the son of promise, just as it almost passed to Esau, if Isaac would have had his way, if not for Rebekah's intervention.

But this time, Bathsheba does it better than Rebekah, because she does not deceive David.

She just goes in and speaks plainly and says, Remember the promise of God.

Remember the promise that you gave to me.

Look forward in hope, in the way that I've been looking forward in hope this whole time.

And give the kingdom to Solomon.

Make sure that the kingdom goes to Solomon.

And it does.

The kingdom passes on to Solomon.

And what does Bathsheba receive for her incredible endurance and incredible faith in the promised son who is to come?

Well, the last scene that we have of Bathsheba is a very interesting one.

King Solomon is now king, her son, and she goes in to speak with him regarding Adonijah.

So Bathsheba went to King Solomon to speak to him on behalf of Adonijah.

Kind of like what I just said.

And the king rose to meet her and bowed down to her.

The king rises to meet her and bows down to Bathsheba.

Then he sat on his throne and had a seat brought for the king's mother, and she sat on his right.

The one who is taken and raped by the king.

The one who has every reason to walk away from this particular dynasty, looks in hope towards the promise of God that there will be a true king, there will be a true husband, there will be a true kingdom.

And she is raised up by the Son and seated at his right hand to rule with him.

Bathsheba is the church.

The one who sits alongside, who is called to rule alongside, the true king, the true husband.

And don't you see that her whole life is a cry for the true husband?

The true husband who will never die.

The true husband who will not take her, but who will be faithful to her, the one who would not be taken from her, but who would lay himself down for her, the true king.

The king who, unlike David as a king, wouldn't send his subjects out so that they might die on his behalf, but the true king who would die on behalf of his subjects, so that he would even die on behalf of his enemies so that they might be brought in.

The true son, the true child of promise, Bathsheba's story, her faith, the faith that she shows throughout her whole life, only makes sense if she's looking towards Jesus.

Because only Jesus fulfills all of those things.

Only Jesus is the true Redeemer.

Only Jesus is the true husband.

Only Jesus is the true king.

Bathsheba's story makes no sense.

It is just useless pain and picking the wrong side over and against her own family who is just showing their faithfulness to her.

How do you explain that dynamic?

How could she have explained that?

She could only explain it.

And probably something that Nathan would have told her.

Look towards the sun.

There is an unthinkable glory coming.

And so now we sing as we long with Bathsheba.

We see the story of Christ.

We're able to sing something like the hope and fear of all the years are met in thee tonight.

Think of the hope and fear of Bathsheba.

Now, let's do that thing that you do at the end of sermons.

Think of the hope and fear in your life.

You see, it is only meaningful.

Insofar as it finds its culmination in Christ.

Anything can be brought to Christ.

It can become a part of his story.

And meaning is there.

Our hope is there.

I'm sure you have family circumstances.

They may not be, it may not be that, you know, the king, your husband, is trying to be murdered by your grandfather and you're trying to explain.

But look, part of what the holidays are for, this is not a fluke, this is a feature of the holidays, is to take all of the emotional dynamics of your family that lie dormant throughout the year, and now they come to life.

Like Ezekiel speaking over the dry bones.

They will rise up and take on flesh.

And those dormant emotional dynamics will be here.

And there are things there that you will see that this is irreconcilable.

Okay, they find their meaning in Christ.

You have a hope in Jesus.

Do you see how her very life story does not make sense outside of Jesus?

It's surprising how that might happen.

But as we practice looking at her story to see how it maps onto our hope that we have in Jesus, practice looking at your own story.

See how it finds the sense of it is found only in Jesus.

You need him as the redeemer.

You need him as the savior.

Look to him.

That is where the meaning is.

It's where the meaning is.

Alright.

Um, no, we won't do any questions there, although there's probably like one question is like, can you say that again?

I got lost like immediately.

So yeah, that's it.

Her story is dynamic and incredible, and uh um makes makes sense in Jesus.

Jesus is the is the true king, he's the true host, the true husband.

He calls us to the feast with him to be raised up next to him in the heavenly places, just as Bathsheba was raised to the right hand of the king.

And he is the the true Savior who lays his life down for us.

Jesus, the night before he was betrayed.

Well, Paul writes this regarding that.

He says, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

That the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

How different.

David looks at Bathsheba and says, Of her, this is your body, which is for me.

The one flesh you are with your husband I will break on my behalf.

The true husband takes his own body and says, This is my body, I will break it on your behalf of his bride.

The true husband is coming.

In the same way he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

To cover David's own sins, he took Uriah's blood.

To atone for himself, he was willing to lay down anyone else.

His friend.

We, Christ's enemies.

He was willing to pour out his own blood that we might be reconciled to him.

The true king is in Christ.

As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

And as we proclaim his death, we remember that for a good man one would dare even to die.

But God shows his love for us in this: that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

The true husband comes in Christ.

Look for him there.

You'll find him.

Holy Father, we praise you for the glory that you showed to us in the stories and your word.

We pray that we would see the wonder of Bathsheba's faith and be encouraged in our own faith.

That we would see her in situations where it makes so much sense to not trust in this promised son.

Lord, but that we would hold on like she did.

As we look in faith towards you, Lord, our Savior, our true husband, our redeemer, the one in whom our stories could finally make sense.

For your glory, Lord.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.