Let us look at David and Bathsheba’s story that we find in today’s readings. David is one of my Biblical Heroes from my childhood. There are so many amazing lessons that we can learn from the life of David. It is so difficult and painful to go through a Biblical passage where we see David falling in a big way. But on the other hand it is the beauty of the word of God -the Bible that it does not hide the failures of its heroes. There is something very encouraging and comforting that God does not isolate us from understanding and knowing about the big failures that these people in the Bible experience. David was a man, a human being just like you and I and there were weaknesses of the flesh. Sometimes the weaknesses get the better of us and the enemy attacks and the world presents opportunities and we just get drawn away. This passage also reminds us that there is justice in the heart of God and the fear of the Lord is good thing as the Bible says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. (Prov. 9:10) But David did not have the fear of the Lord at this point of time.
Let us pray:
Lord we, as a church come to your throne of grace; we Pray for the wisdom to understand this difficult passage. We pray for understanding, Lord you are the teacher, teach us. Lord we confess that we are sinners, we deeply fall short of your glory but Lord we know that because of Jesus we are clothed in righteousness and in His name we pray. Amen
The word of God tells us clearly that adultery can be physical, spiritual and emotional. Jesus expands it further and states that even if a man looks lustfully at another woman, outside of a relationship which is not acceptable to the Lord, he commits adultery and vice-versa. When people cannot stop themselves from letting evil grip their minds by first fantasizing them about others – they are on the path of destruction.
2 Samuel 11– It is the turning point in the life of David. It is the famous chapter most of us are familiar with. David committed adultery and killed Bathsheba’s Husband Uriah. Though he repented; there were devastating consequences for his life in the next 20 to 25 years. We do not know for sure, at what age David was when it happened but a good guess is that David was in his early forties. So he had about 25 years to go after this terrible tragic hour in his life. Though he was fully forgiven and enjoyed the love of God but the consequences in his life family and in his Nation were devastating with long term affects. The next 10 chapter of 2 Samuel are the results of it. The point is to be warned about the seriousness of disobeying the Lord even though we are beloved of the Lord, like David. David was one of the most mighty kings of Israel. He won many battles for this chosen people. He was known to be triumphant in every battle. He was called a “man after God’s own heart.” If we read 2 Samuel chapter 8 -9 and 10, David had tremendous victory over his enemies. he had victory one after another, I mean an unbroken stream of triumphs for several years. At this occasion he is still in his military conflict with the Ammonites. Ammon is like the current nation of Jordon, right next door. But when we come to chapter 11, we see a different attitude, he stayed in Jerusalem while the army of Israel was fighting the enemies of God under the leadership of Joab. The word of God says in the first verse of 2 Samuel 11…In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.
Notice the word But David remained at Jerusalem. David had dropped his armour but he is going to step into a place far more dangerous than the battle field that his army is on right now.
By now, he had become complacent! Like sometimes people become complacent in their walk with God – they self-approve things and have a justification for everything they do and would like to do.
Spiritual complacency is deadly to the soul. It is deadly when we no longer seek after the lord. Our souls are dead when our hunger for God is dead. So the first stage that we need to be aware of and fearful of is when we grow complacence in our spiritual journey.
The second thing is when we compromise
It is human nature after we settle we start to take it easy, we start to take things lightly.
Verse-2
It happened, late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful.
Sometimes we don’t use our time wisely especially our free time. When people do not love God they look for others things to love or to be loved. How many people fall into sin even well on the internet. Apathy towards God leads to addiction to the world. Because your soul is restless, longing to love someone or to be loved by someone. Your soul is restless until it finds its rest in God as St. Augustine wisely said.
Coming to David, I assume his Palace would have been the most high and magnificient building in that area and he looked down at a woman bathing. He looked at her with lust instead of having totally ignored the sight. The power and the positon he held, made him take this lust further. And, he sent his messengers to enquire about her. The Bible says (its kind of a warning) it was reported ‘this is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. So that’s it she is married.
Who are Eliam and Uriah? 2 Samuel 23 reveals.. they are the mighty men of David.
David knows Eliam and Uriah very well they are not just ordinary men but they are the mighty warriors in his army. David slept with Bathsheba and later she,returned back to her home. Till now it was easy to conceal this act very easily but NOT FROM GOD. The Bible clearly states, in verse 27, But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord. Then Bathsheba reported her pregnancy!
David used his power to order Uriah to come back immediately to Jerusalem. He tried to make Uriah sleep with his wife so to conceal his act of adultery but that never happened. Uriah respected the king to the extent that he was made to carry his own death warrant to Joab. David by now had created something like a pool of sins in which he was making his own people dive, because of the consequences of lust. The passage clearly tells us that they were successful in killing Uriah according to their plot. David destroyed Uriah’s life, had already destroyed his marriage and his own soul until later we know Nathan appeared. His wife mourned and was then brought to David’s palace.
When we study the New Testament we find that adultery is the second most- mentioned sin after Idolatory. The number of times it is mentioned serves as a warning to people, today, more than ever, when people are attracted to other beings with whom there is absolutely no scope of relationship approved in Lord’s sight.
The Lord was displeased with David and when you read the next ten chapters you will see how much he had to suffer because there is no power greater than God and absolutely nothing that can be hidden from God.
It is difficult for a person who is obsessed with ‘lust’ to control his/her mind. It is not he/she himself who governs his act but it is the lust which governs it. One of the great illustrations for ‘sin’ given by Sadhu Sundar Singh, about whom we talked just a few Sundays back is.. He uses water as metaphor to symbolise sin so he says when a person is in the river the person does not know the amount of water that passes over one’s head.. it could be tons of water in few seconds.. but once a person comes out of the river.. if you pour a mug full of water on one’s head.. the person can feel the weight of water being poured out on his or her head. It is the same with sin when we are in that river full of sins we just ignore all the bad deeds we do. We develop an attitude that everything is fine, we have justification for everything. And we start compromising with everything.
If someone is not able to come out of that lust – know that you are on the path of spiritual destruction and sometimes worldly too. One cannot come out of the problem by himself/herself. But, Jesus has the power to make the person completely new. Look at today’s Gospel passage, one of the most familiar stories of the New Testament-the feeding of the five thousand.. this is the only miracle recorded in all four Gospel Matthew, Mark Luke and John other than his own resurrection. It is a creative miracle. The act is not restorative in nature but it is an act of creating something out of nothing. This is creating food out of nothing because five loaves and two fish are nothing if we think about the accurate number of people who ate and they could be around 20 to 25 thousand people including women and children as Matthew writes.
The point is our God is the God of universe HE is the God of creation who can create anything and everything out of nothing. If he can make a new men and women. God can make me and you new if we submit to His will and confess our sins. God is merciful and faithful to forgive us our sins and make us a new creation in Christ. The story of David and Bathsheba reminds us that our God is a just God and knows all that we do, there is nothing hidden from God.
Let us be silent for a while… and confess our sins in front of God, though God knows everything but He wants our true confession.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen