David & Uriah

And that is awesome. Let's sing that together. Praise the Lord for that. We're in 2 Samuel 11. If you want to turn there. I'm not going to read the passage before we begin because I'm actually going to try to do about five times as many verses as I've ever done. and we'll just read them as we go.

Excuse me. But last week we looked at the first five verses and we discussed basically David and Bathsheba. I titled the sermon last week, David and Bathsheba. And if I titled this week's sermon, which I guess I should, it would be titled David and Uriah. And next week's sermon will be David and Nathan. and then the week after that I think it will be David and God and then David and Christ so David is the theme here he is kind of part of the story but in 2 Samuel 11 the first five verses what we saw last week was this woman Bathsheba who was married to Uriah the Hittite one of David's mighty men and she and David sinned together and she was found to be pregnant.

And then David finds out that she's pregnant. And so when we pick up in 2 Samuel 11, we're going to now see how David deals with this situation. alright so there's a million applications that we didn't make about lust and looking at things and making bad choices and things like that that David had with this woman but let's continue in 2 Samuel 11 verse 6 now well let's go to verse 5 and the woman conceived and she sent and told David I am pregnant so somehow she knows this and she tells David what happened and I don't imagine that this was instantaneous so some time had gone by here it's not something you figure out the next day and so here's David now finds out he gets word that this woman is pregnant and now he has a couple options So before we even get into all this text, just this one verse, he has some options, right? He has options just like Adam had in the garden, right?

One option is to repent. He could have stopped right then and there and repented of what he'd done. He could have confessed it. He could have gone to the Lord and asked for forgiveness. Excuse me. trying to clear my throat here a little bit. And he had another option.

Another option would have been to try to cover it up somehow with righteous works. I don't know. I don't know what he could have done in that case. But the choice that David makes that we'll see is David decided to just add sin on top of sin. So whereas Adam and Eve They tried to sow some fig leaves. They understood their shame.

They tried to cover their shame with something that in and of itself would have been somewhat innocuous. You know, wearing a leaf. They tried to cover themselves. But David just is going to add more sin. And this is the nature of sin. It's also the nature of righteousness.

Both sin and righteousness breed more of themselves. So if you are a person that is living in sin, you're probably going to breed more sin. Cain killed Abel, and then the next thing he does is lies to God and gets angry at God about it. But when you start to do righteous things, you almost want to do more. I was telling Jason, I said, sometimes the more I find time to pray, the more I wish I had more time to pray.

Like, it's like I don't feel like I've done enough. And then on the days when I don't have as much time maybe to set aside, or maybe I don't set aside enough time, it's like I don't even crave it as much as the other days that I already had done more. And so that's how sin is. And so David is a Christian. He's a saved person. He's a person who knows the Lord at this point in time. in some people's mind David would have been a potential candidate for the seed of the woman promised in Genesis 3.15 who would come and actually deliver his people and of course we know David was not that seed and if David had done all the right things in this situation we wouldn't have this text of scripture and so we thank God that he used David in this way so we have it.

So let's see what he does with Uriah the Hittite. 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. So David has this pretext for why he invites Uriah there. So he's being pretty deceptive.

He's really pretending to care about the battle. he's pretending to care about this thing that's going on out in the war so that he has some reason to have called Uriah because it would be odd for a man to be out on the battlefield with the rest of the guys and somebody just call him home for no reason And so he pretends to have a reason So he adding lying now on top of his sin He can't just call Uriah and say, hey, here's what happened. I want to say I'm sorry. I mean, he could have.

But he can't do that and then still hide his sin, which is his goal here. His whole goal is he wants to cover up the fact that he sinned. And poor David doesn't have a Planned Parenthood down the street where he could just send Bathsheba. Because this sin happens thousands of times a day in our culture now. And now when people get someone pregnant that they don't wish was pregnant, they just kill the baby.

And thank God David didn't do that. And I think there was a sense where David actually, in the sense that you can love your mistress, and you could love the man you're in an adulterous relationship with. I think David and Bathsheba loved each other, and he didn't want her hurt. He didn't want the baby hurt. The penalty for adultery would have been to stone Bathsheba.

And David probably would have gotten away with it being the king. It certainly would have brought a lot of shame and reproach upon God's people, which is actually what David's going to confess in Psalm 51. And with Nathan, that's going to happen as well. But so he says, you know, how are things going? And so in my mind, when I picture these stories, this is what you might do too.

I kind of have David like hanging out in the palace, and Bathsheba comes, and then she's gone. And then he like gets this letter, and he opens the letter, and it says, hey, I'm pregnant, what are we going to do? and then Uriah shows up and he's just talking to him. And I think what we can do safely, even though it's not in the text, I think we can draw some other inferences from what would normally happen here.

I think a lot of people knew what was going on. David didn't live in a vacuum and Uriah didn't take a direct path from wherever he was and just walk by and not talk to anybody and all of a sudden he's in the king's presence. I tend to think that Uriah ended up walking through the rumor mill. I tend to think that Uriah probably had somebody somewhere along the line say, Hey, did you know your wife was up in the palace with the king the other day?

Did you know that he sent for her? do you think all these servants of David were so perfectly loyal that they all kept some secret that David sent for her that she was brought to him I'm going to say I'm sure they had some alone time and people knew they were alone though kings are never really alone people know they're in another room there's always a guard people knew and there were people who knew Uriah and they probably cared about him and loved him and contrary to the popular notion today that Uriah was some kind of rape victim, or that Bathsheba was a rape victim I wonder if maybe Uriah knew that his wife wasn't so pure maybe he knew she was the type of lady who when he was gone something like this could happen, I can't say that part for sure but the way Uriah responds the rest of the chapter actually makes me wonder if Uriah either knew what was going on or had been told at least the rumors because David says to Uriah in verse 8 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 and so David sends him something to enjoy with his wife So what's David trying to do? So try to sanitize it enough. David wants Uriah to go to his house, even though he's supposed to be on the battlefield.

And David wants Uriah to go to his house and do what most people would think that a guy would do who hadn't seen his wife for a while. And then when Bathsheba turns out to publicly be pregnant, which wouldn't have been easy to hide. At some point it would have been public, even if she could have hid it up until the birth. And then people would naturally remember, oh, well, Uriah was home for a while, so that makes sense.

So now here's this little Uriah the Hittite's baby is what people would think. That was David's plan. He was going to cover the whole thing up. So he says, go down and wash your feet. Now, 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 in verse 9. And this is what I was talking about last week.

When we read some of these narratives, there's these little parts that you're just like, you can read right past them. But why would he do this? You know what I'm saying? How many of you, if you were away from your family, in theory here, from the woman that you love and that you were betrothed to and you married, while you're away and you have a chance to come home and see your family member, to see your wife, that you would avoid it?

I can't think of a reason other than the providence of God putting it upon Uriah's heart for no good reason at all, just God directing him that way. Or, I think personally, Uriah had, I think he had a suspicion at this point. And I think David's behavior was suspicious to him. It would have been very odd to have brought someone back from the battlefield like that.

And again I think there were probably servants and guards and other people who were in the army with Uriah who probably knew what happened They probably felt bad for the guy but at the same time they wanted him to know. So Uriah sleeps at the door. So then they told David this. Uriah did not go down to his house. Well, why? why would they tell him like obviously they knew he was supposed to somehow I tend to think there was far more people involved I'm not a conspiracy theorist in the sense that people use that term as a pejorative but I tend to think David had a few people involved here that there were people who were protecting the king because they were afraid for their own head how did guys get power in these days for the most part.

Usually it was you killed the previous king, you know, or you slept with his wives, and then all of a sudden you were the king. That's kind of how it worked in a lot of these ways. And you brought your own servants in. If you were a servant of David, if you were one of the people that lived in David's house and you took care of the things that David takes care of, and you were in that house, hey brother, good, good to see you.

If you were one of the people that was in David's house serving him and taking care of all the things of his and then something happened where David was found to be unfit any longer and either something happened to David, he died or he was ejected, you would lose your livelihood as well. And the fear of losing your own livelihood will cause a lot of men to do some compromised things. And so I tend to think there was a bit of a conspiracy going on.

People knew what was going on. So they go and tell David Uriah did not go down to his house verse 10 and David then says to Uriah have you not come from a journey so now Uriah is back in front of David right and remember they're supposed to be friends I think why did you not go down to your house David wants to know why maybe he was giving Uriah a chance to just confront him on it I don't know Uriah said to David the ark and 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?

He says, as you live and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing. Uriah appears to be a somewhat noble character now. He's saying, I'm not going to go and enjoy even lawful pleasures that I would be entitled to in this situation, eating and drinking and lying with his wife, because his fellow soldiers are out there living in booths, suffering the elements, missing out on their own time with their own wives and families.

So Uriah is a noble man. But one of the commentators I read pointed out, he says, shall I then go to my house to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife? And some people think that was one of the indicators that Uriah knew what David had done, that this was a jab. Because David did the exact thing Uriah is right now saying he's unwilling to do. Uriah is saying, hey, well, the people are at battle.

I'm not going to be here enjoying myself while people are suffering out there. And yet David, when it was the time of the year when kings went out to battle, he's the one that stayed home and was actually doing these deeds. So Uriah, the noble man, says, I'm not going to do this. He says, I will not do this thing. So he makes a commitment, I'm not going to do this.

Almost challenging David at this point. To me it's mind-blowing how courageous Uriah seems to be almost at this point. Because I have a feeling Uriah knew what was coming as well. Somebody had to die. We'll put it that way. But so David said to Uriah, well remain here today also.

So instead of sending him back to battle, he says remain here and tomorrow I will send you back. So David just has to keep coming up with new ideas to cover his sins. So here's David. Opportunity after opportunity. I won't say to make things right, but to just confess what was wrong. Opportunity after opportunity.

But instead, David's plan is, we're going to get Uriah to do the thing that would cover up my sin. and so Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next so in verse 13 David invited him and he ate in his presence and drank so David invites him basically has like a meal for him right he serves him so that he made him drunk and in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his Lord but he did not go down to his house so a couple points of application here one Uriah even after he got drunk still held his commitment not to go to his house this was a strong commitment on Uriah's part I have made a lot of commitments in my life that I found out afterwards were not very strong and the way I knew it wasn't very strong was because the very next day or the next moment or the next week I was no longer adhering to that commitment I think that that's a big problem in the United States I'll just keep it local here I think it's a problem with men in our culture right now I think the problem is that men do not keep their commitments and I think because we are weak and we make bad commitments we make unwise commitments at times we say things rashly we people pleasers so we say the thing we think the person in front of us wants to hear, so we commit to something we probably shouldn't have committed to, and then when we don't follow through with it, we excuse ourselves. And then, over time, this is what happens. You have a choice here.

I'm speaking to men, but women too, kids. you have a choice when you start realizing that you're not keeping your commitments. The choice that most of us make is we start to not even make commitments at all anymore because then at least we're not liars. But the choice we should make is we should start to let our yes be yes and our no be no and we should make decisive godly commitments.

We should use wisdom and make commitments we can keep. I have been a part of Christian ministries for a decade and a half now and there's been nothing more disappointing to me well okay I won't say nothing one of the biggest disappointments that I have experienced is men saying they will be there they will do this they will do that and then not doing it and I'll tell you what every single time they think they have a good excuse and I will tell you that sometimes there are good excuses there are things that happen providentially where we say hey I'll see you Sunday Lord willing and then Aaron planned to be here today and she's not here well why well something came up providentially Elijah wanted to be here today he's providentially ill that's a different story But I want you to think about your own commitments in your life. What keeps you from them?

What keeps you from doing the things you said you were going to do? Because you're lying when you don't do them. And just not making commitments so you're no longer a liar doesn't really help anybody. All it does is it just makes you feel a little better about it. We need to be able to make commitments and keep them. And Uriah was an example of that. but secondly Uriah was in David's presence and David got him drunk and I think again when we read these narratives things happen so fast you know one minute he's talking to him the next minute he's sleeping the next minute they're eating he's drunk then the next minute he didn't go to his house and then it's the next morning and you read this and you can read it fast but if you meditate upon what you're reading if you take time to meditate upon God's word on a regular basis, you'll start to notice these things that are happening.

It says David made him drunk. So you have this noble man that's one of David's mighty men. He's out at war for the nation of Israel. He's fighting for the people that can't fight for themselves. He gets brought home under some fake pretext of just wanting to know how the thing's going, when David could have just been there in the first place on his own.

He says, I'm not going to go be with my wife. because my fellow brothers can't do the same thing, and I'd rather just suffer with them. And David gets them drunk, which is a sin against God. And we're a Reformed Baptist Church, and so we have a theology of drinking here, that you may not all know even, but we have a theology of drinking here, that all good gifts come from God, from the Father of lights, with whom there's no variation or shadow due to change.

And that we receive things with thanksgiving. And we drink wine at communion, don't we? So if anybody accuses us of being abstinence or teetotalers, we're not. But we also believe that being drunk is a sin. We just read through 1 Peter. Peter says to be sober-minded multiple times.

You're not sober minded when you're drunk. He even refers to drinking parties and drunkenness in chapter 4 as the things that the Gentiles do that the believers should no longer do. Paul says not to be drunk with wine for that's debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit. And so there is a theology here of drinking that we need to understand. and we need to understand that there is a way that you can enjoy the good gift of alcoholic beverages that God has provided and we need to be very honest with ourselves so this could be a whole sermon series but I just want to challenge people particularly if you have a history of substance abuse or drunkenness in your own life particularly if you have sinned against God by getting drunk.

And what happens when you get drunk? Usually you do something else that you shouldn't do. I'm sure there's people out there that have gotten drunk and just sat in a chair and went to sleep. Most people get drunk as part of their revelry and their drinking, and it helps to excuse their behavior. It helps them become the person inwardly they're not courageous enough to actually be in their sinfulness.

And so I warn you, if you like to partake, and to be careful around other people. You don't know what battle they're fighting. But I warn you to keep an eye on it. I can't tell you two drinks a night or five drinks a week. There's no rule here I can give you. It would be easier to define modesty than those kinds of things, I think, even.

But we need to be thoughtful about it. It should be something you're concerned about, something you think about. and some of you parents maybe you don't have a problem maybe you never did or maybe you did and now you've gotten past it some of your kids are going to be exposed to those things and they may not know what to do with it so we have to be able to talk about these things But again, he didn't go down to his house. So David's in big trouble now.

There is no way that Uriah is going to be able to be called the father of this child. And I think that David cared about Bathsheba. I think he cared about her enough. Because David could have just really said nothing. And I think he probably could have gotten away with it. and Bathsheba would have been found to be an adulteress and she would have been stoned and that would have been it.

And there's a reason Bathsheba felt comfortable sending David that letter. And I think Bathsheba knew that David would protect her. Maybe they had a conversation about it. I mean, there's some speculation here, but I think David cared about her enough that he didn't want to see her just stoned for adultery. he didn't want Uriah's jealousy to be able to get into the situation if you look at Proverbs 6 real quick couple of verses Proverbs 6 32 he who commits adultery lacks sense he who does it destroys himself he will get wounds and dishonor and his disgrace will not be wiped away So this is pretty bad what's going to happen to David if he's caught.

And then it says, For jealousy makes a man furious, and he will not spare when he takes revenge. He will accept no compensation. He will refuse, though you multiply gifts. I think I read this. Most murders that you see committed are jealousy. They're fueled by jealousy.

Somebody looked at or touched somebody that they shouldn't have, and the person who thought that was their person went and took the other person out. Anger is overwhelming and wrath is cruel, but who can stand before jealousy? Proverbs 27. So David has to do something with Uriah. Either Uriah already knows and David doesn't realize this, or David knows Uriah is going to find out. and so David hatches a plot to kill him so listen in the morning David wrote a letter to Joab so Joab is this guy who we talked about last week if you want to read about Joab Joab will do whatever is good for Joab and one thing about Joab that is really interesting that makes him so willing to kill one of his own men Uriah is for Joab then to be able to hold that against David actually gives Joab some power and leverage.

Joab's for Joab. But in the morning David wrote a letter to Joab because Joab would have the power to do this and sent it 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. it couldn't be any more clear. It's cowardly. But it couldn't be any more clear.

I mean, David could have just said, put him in the front, because I think that's good for him. He makes it clear to Joab, we are making sure that Uriah dies, and we can't do it by our own hands. We're going to let the Ammonites do it. I mean, David's the king. He probably could have had somebody killed pretty easily if he really wanted. But he devises this plan.

And he has Uriah carry the letter. So here's Uriah carrying his own sentence of execution. And it makes me wonder if somehow he was able to read it or see it. I don't know if he was. But he carried the letter. Joab was besieging the city, verse 16.

So David plan to kill Uriah is complete Then Joab sent and told David all the news about the fighting So now David sends a note back It's not like David had a live stream. You've got to remember, especially when you're thinking about some of these things before telephones, there were messengers running back and forth, and they had to pass these things. There were days that could go by, and David would have been sitting wondering what was happening, and Bathsheba's over there.

She doesn't know what's going on. But so Joab sent and told David all the news about the fighting, and he instructed the messenger, I'm in verse 19, when you have finished telling all the news about the fighting to the king. He says, then 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 Jerubasheth 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 Joab kind of setting David up here he sends a messenger to tell him about losing the battle but he's going to look like an idiot people are going to be like why did you do this we have a history in Judges 9 of getting too close to a wall. And even a woman who's not part of the military dropped a millstone and killed one of our people. Why did you do this?

Joab's committing professional suicide by making such a bad decision. But he's doing it for David. And he's going to hold it over David's head if he can. And so he wants David to react to the thing. and then he wants to assuage David's anger by reminding him through the messenger that Uriah is dead. Well, this messenger doesn't do what he's told. The messenger went and came and told David all that Joab had said to tell him.

So 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 archers shot at your servants from the wall. Some of the king's servants are dead, and your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also. So he just comes right out and tells them. He doesn't even give them the chance to do the I'm angry thing and then respond the way Joab said.

But now David knows what happened. David knows that Uriah the Hittite is dead. He also knows, in verse 24, some of the king's servants are dead. so now David in an effort to cover up his sin of adultery with Bathsheba has now sent a number of his own military men to die people who weren't even affected by this people who weren't even a part of it died because he had to do something to try to have Uriah die and so a number of ladies husbands didn't come home from that battle because David stood on his roof and lusted it all started with a glance it all started with not being where he was supposed to be and so David covering up his own sin And more, he says to the messenger, Thus you shall say to Joab, Don't feel bad, Joab.

Do not let this matter displease you. For the sword devours now one and now another. It's just war. No big deal. He just literally sent a man to his death, guilty of murder, no doubt. And as the result of that depraved indifference for the rest of the man's life, other people died too. weakening the confidence in their own army, weakening the confidence in their own leaders.

This is total wickedness. And you can read this chapter in like eight minutes and you can be on to 2 Samuel 12 if you don't meditate upon these things. This could happen to somebody here There are people all the time who are murdered in this country There are people all the time who are hurt in this country, and they weren't the object of the person's anger who does the hurting.

If somebody comes into a place to kill their spouse's mistress or adulterous man or whatever it is and other people get hurt in the process. So David says to him, strengthen your attack against the city and overthrow it and encourage them. So he tells the messenger what to tell Joab and Joab, they'll conquer in this case. And so when the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah, her husband was dead, she lamented over her husband.

And when the morning was over, mourning sadness. So she spent a week grieving for the death of her husband Uriah. But when the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house. And she became his wife and bore him a son. So just like that. Chances are it was fake grieving for her husband.

It was just enough so that people thought she loved him, cared about him. Now they could get together, they could have their baby. David could be with his son that she was going to bear to him. And they could always claim, well, it was Uriah's, and nobody would probably know the difference, except the people that already knew who... They weren't going to say anything.

David knew that. But the thing that David had done displeased Yahweh. There is not a character in the Bible, other than Jesus Christ our Lord, that God speaks more highly of than David. He says things like, David did all that pleased me. When he describes all the kings, everything he did was not pleasing to the Lord. But with David, he's a man after God's heart, they say.

Jesus is called the son of David, right? David got to write a big portion of scripture. But the thing that David had done displeased Yahweh. So no matter what happens in this life, no matter what you think you're getting away with, no matter what you think you can do to concoct a plan to cover it up, no matter what other evildoers do, maybe not yourself.

God knows what's happening. This is one of the reasons why you don't have to take vengeance on people as a Christian when they wrong you, because God will repay. He is the one who will have vengeance. There will be no sin that goes unpunished. Every single sin that's committed will be punished. it will either be punished upon Jesus Christ the son of David God's son or that individual will have to suffer for it and if you are a Christian today and you have sinned against your great God and you have not confessed it and you're still covering it up and you're still trying to come up with ways to cover it up the thing that you are doing is displeasing to Yahweh, to the Lord.

And He will make a way for all things to come to light. Everything done in the darkness will come to light. It will be shouted from the rooftops. So one final thought. We talk about Uriah. We had David and Bathsheba.

We talked about Bathsheba a little bit. we'll talk about her more she got wise you read Proverbs 31 it King Solomon talking and it his mom Bathsheba that says it not good for kings to give their strength to women She got wise. She saw the damage that her own actions did. Her seduction of David. David certainly was a big center in that activity too. But Uriah, Uriah turns out to be a noble man. it seems.

He fought for the nation of Israel. He loved his country. He loved God's people. He refused to enjoy the pleasures that were denied to his fellow soldiers. Ultimately he was betrayed by his friend in order to be murdered. He was delivered up by the king.

He carried his own sentence of execution with him. and he ended up being killed by the enemies of his people. But it was his own people who actually delivered him up to be killed. And in the end, Uriah, although a sinner just like every other one of us, Uriah died not because of his own sin, but he died due to his righteousness. He ended up dying because of the sin of another. in some ways although Uriah had done nothing wrong he was led like a sheep to the slaughter and so Uriah reminds me of someone he reminds me of Jesus Christ and I think that's intentional on God's part whereas David is actually supposed to lead us to Jesus Christ and David is the type and David is the king and he's the one who should have fulfilled righteousness in a sense.

Uriah gives us a picture of what our Lord would do for us. Betrayed by one that he loves. Delivered to his enemies. Murdered. To cover up the sin of David. Jesus Christ murdered to pay for our sins.

So rejoice today rejoice that a documented history of your sin is not etched in God's word for all eternity don't stand too harsh in judgment of David but rejoice that God we'll see next week God did forgive David God made something good out of something bad but there will be consequences to sin as we'll see as well Father thank you for your word thank you that we can have confidence that your word will never return void we pray that you would help us to meditate on the things that your word says throughout the week as we have a few more weeks in 2 Samuel 12 and Psalm 51 I pray that you would open our eyes to behold wondrous things out of your law I pray for these people here today that you would bless them as they sat under the hearing of your word you would help us to live lives that show our obedience Lord not only to the good examples we see in scripture but also just help us to love the Christ help us not to read the story of David and Uriah and to just see an example of what not to do, Lord, but rather help us to be mindful that it's pointing us to the one who did the right thing. I pray that your Holy Spirit would empower us and by the examples given, Lord, to be able to live lives that honor you. Keep us, Lord, from this gross sin and cause us to be repentant at the first inkling of it.

In Christ's name I pray. Amen.