“And One Thing Led to Another”

2 Samuel 11

John T. Mabray, Pastor

Rivermont EPC

Lynchburg, Virginia

October 10, 2004

8:30 and 11:00 AM

THE PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION

Almighty and everlasting God, before whose holiness even the angelic beings cover their faces: look upon us in the promised mercy and grace of Your Son our Savior, Jesus Christ; and send Your Holy Spirit to work miraculously in our hearts and minds, convicting us of our sins and comforting us with the gospel. May Your Holy Word warn us and wean us away from our lusts, and direct our steps that we might walk in Your ways and keep Your commandments, by the help of Your Spirit, through the grace of Your Son, to the glory of Your name. Amen.

THE ASCRIPTION OF PRAISE

Now to Him who loves us, who has freed us from our sins by His blood, to Jesus Christ be all praise, honor, and glory. Amen.

In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war,

David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army. …But David remained in Jerusalem.

And one thing led to another.

            But, after all, why should David himself have gone out to war against the Ammonites? He had served on the battlefield and had risked his life many times, and he had won for Israel a prosperous, peaceful life within secure borders. The Scripture says that David “… won a name for himself …and administered justice and equity to all his people” (2 Sam. 8:15). He had already done so much, and so much depended upon him! And so, “In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war … David remained in Jerusalem.” And one thing led to another.

            I imagine that it was a beautiful evening: not too cool, not too warm – just right to make a man feel good, perhaps a little too good. Jerusalem was just on the verge of full bloom. Sweet scents of spring filled the air, with their invigorating and intoxicating effects. It was the sort of evening that could make a man feel frisky and lazy at the same time.

“It happened,” says the Scripture, “one evening” after the king had gotten up from his nap and was walking around on the flat-top roof of his palace, surveying his city. He cast his royal eye to the northeast, and for a fleeting moment thought of Joab, the captain, and all his soldiers. But then, the corner of his eye caught a movement, and his attention; his thoughts of Joab and the soldiers flew away in the evening breeze. And one thing led to another.

She was beautiful, bathing there in the soft light of the evening. David did not know her. But he would know her. He was a man who had everything. He was a man who could have anything. And you know how one thing leads to another. The Book of James tells us that

... each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death (James 1:15).

            David sent a servant to find out about her. Bathsheba: a name as beautiful as the woman herself. But that was not her full identity; no, she was Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. Uriah the Hittite: he was not a Jew by birth, but a foreigner, a Gentile, but one who had become a member of the Israelite community, indeed, he was one of David’s most loyal soldiers; and, evidently, he had embraced the Israelite faith in Yahweh, the LORD, for Uriah spoke with great reverence and piety concerning the Ark of the Covenant. On this beautiful evening, Uriah was camped on the battlefield, serving his king.

            His king, however, was serving himself, and sent for his wife. David took her, and lay with her. And then she returned to her house. And that would have been the end of it … except that one thing led to another.

            Weeks passed, spring warmed toward summer, and the wife of Uriah sent her own servant to David, saying, “I am pregnant.” It wasn’t exactly what David wanted to hear. He knew the law of God prescribed for the nation of Israel. Leviticus 20:10 states that “If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife … both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.” Whether such punishment would have actually been enacted against the king for taking the wife of a foreigner is doubtful; but David knew that it would not do for word of his wickedness to spread through the kingdom. He had an image to preserve. And so David did what Adam and Eve did when they knew that they were in danger of being found guilty: he tried to cover-up his sin.

            The solution was simple enough. David arranged for Uriah to come home from the battlefield for a few days. That would cover it up quite nicely. Or so he thought. When Uriah came back to Jerusalem, he reported to David, who pretended to be seeking news of the war against the Ammonites. Then he told Uriah to go home for a little “R&R.” But Uriah didn’t go home to sleep with his wife. He slept at the entrance to the palace, with the rest of the king’s servants. Why? “Because,” said Uriah,

The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents, and my master Joab and my lord’s men are camped in the open fields. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and lie with my wife? As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing!” (2 Sam.11:11).

            What faithfulness! What commitment! What humility! Could any king anywhere find a better soldier than Uriah the Hittite? And we may well wonder why Uriah’s integrity did not awaken David to his folly. But Uriah’s integrity only served to inspire David’s deceitfulness. He came up with a new scheme. He would keep Uriah in Jerusalem one more day and night. He invited Uriah to dinner in the palace – good food, good wine, and lots of it. Then, surely, after wining and dining with the king, the good soldier would be in a mood to go home to his wife. But he didn’t; he slept on a mat, along with the rest of the king’s servants. Even when he was drunk with wine, Uriah had more integrity than David, who by now was completely drunk with self-deception.

            It is at this point that the story turns from bad to worse: one thing led to another; or, as John Calvin put it, one evil fed on another. Say it ain’t so, David; say it ain’t so. Say it ain’t so that you wrote out an order for Joab to put Uriah the Hitttite on the front line, to attack the walled-city, and then to pull back his support, so that Uriah would surely be killed. Say it ain’t so. Say it ain’t so, David, that you put that letter in Uriah’s own hand because you knew that you could trust him to deliver it without ever reading it. Say it ain’t so.

            Is this really the David that we had come to know? The courageous shepherd-boy who trusted in the LORD and slew Goliath with a sling and a stone? The righteous fugitive, who repented over having cut-off the corner of King Saul’s robe, when he could have understandably cut-off his head? The humble king who did not care what other people thought when he danced with joy before the LORD as the Ark of God entered Jerusalem? The beloved one, with whom the LORD established His covenant of an everlasting throne? How could it be? How could he do this? David the beloved – the bold, brilliant leader of God’s people; the sweet psalmist of Israel – was now David the disgraceful, the disgusting, the diabolical.

This is a horrible story about the horrors of sin. And it ought to cause us – you and me -- to shudder with horror at our own sins, and at the thought of our own potential for sin. If it doesn’t, there is something seriously wrong with us. It ought to awaken within us a dread and hatred of every evil thought that ever enters our minds. It ought to sear into our souls the terrifying certainty that “whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap,” because one thing leads to another.

You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.

You shall not commit adultery.

You shall not murder.

You shall not bear false witness.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9 ). If you can’t understand David, then you don’t understand the weakness of your own human flesh and the lure of Satan’s temptations. Beware. Beware. Beware. Proverbs 4:23 says, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” The Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul warns us all, myself most of all:

…watch yourself, or you may also be tempted. …If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. … if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! (Galatians 6:1,3; 1 Corinthians 10:12).

            It is a dreadful thing to think – now think about this, about the fact – that God, in His providence, prevented David’s first two cover-up schemes from working. God, in His providence, upheld Uriah with integrity, so that Uriah might be an example to David of godly faithfulness, calling David to his senses so that he might face the reality of his wickedness, confess his sin, and seek the mercy of the LORD. But David persisted in his self-willed self-deception and sought to cover his sin with more sin instead of seeking the LORD’s mercy to cover his sin. And this time, the LORD allowed David’s sinful scheme to work. David got what he wanted: the death of Uriah the Hittite. And that ought to scare the hell out of each one of us, because one thing leads to another. And it wasn’t only Uriah who died in that abominable plot, but also other loyal soldiers in the king’s army. They went down with Uriah as collateral casualties, faithful soldiers thrown to the enemy helpless and hopeless by their own king. Their blood was on David’s hands, too, needlessly wasted in a battle designed for defeat.

            It was murder, pure and simple. From the top of the palace roof on a beautiful evening, to the palace chamber with the beautiful wife of another man, to a bloodstained battlefield upon which faithful soldiers lay dead for no good reason – one thing led to another. And another. David himself had become like a dead man:  dead in his relationship with God, with a dead and calloused conscience, a stone-cold heart, and a cynical, cruel, calculating mind. When he got the report from Joab that Uriah and other soldiers had been killed in this perverted ploy, David’s response betrayed the rot in his soul:

“Don’t let this upset you (literally, don’t let this be evil in your eyes); the sword devours one as well as another. Press the attack against the city and destroy it.”

(2 Samuel 11:25)

In other words: “Joab, don’t worry about it. It’s no big deal. You did what you had to do. You did what I wanted you to do. And we’ve got plenty of other good men. Now, go win the war.”

            David had finally put the matter to rest, or so he thought. As the Scripture poignantly puts it, “the wife of Uriah … became his wife and bore him a son” (2 Samuel 11:26-27). David had managed his mistake, covered-up his sin, and now was ready to get on with his life. The only problem, however, which David had not yet reckoned with, was that there was one witness to all that had taken place: from the palace roof-top to the palace chamber, from the banquet hall to the battlefield – one witness to it all, the One to whom we were introduced at the very beginning of David’s story, the One who sees not as man sees, but looks upon the heart. The Scripture says,“the thing that David had done displeased the LORD,” literally, “was evil in the eyes of the LORD.”

            David had the brilliance, the boldness, the wherewithal to save a whole nation from a whole host of surrounding enemies; but now the question was, who would save David from himself?

            And that question is the question which applies to each of us. You and I have no place to hide, no way to cover up the sin and guilt from the eyes of the One before whom no secrets are hid.

            Now, let’s be honest about how we personally respond to this chapter in David’s life, and to the Biblical declaration that each of us needs the grace and mercy and forgiveness of God just as much as David did.

            First of all, there are those who look at sin rather lightly and glibly and presumptuously, and who say in their hearts, “Well, David committed adultery and even murder, and God still loved him,” as though David’s example provided some kind of rationalization or justification for their own sins, or rationalization for a sin that they are thinking about committing – “Even if I commit adultery, God will forgive me.” Listen: If you are thinking like that, you are self-deceived, and in danger of ship-wrecking your faith (1 Tim. 1:19). If you are thinking like that, then you don’t really understand the gospel. The grace of God, the mercy of the cross, does not entitle you to a line of spiritual credit against which you can borrow and spend as you please. To think that you can go ahead and commit a premeditated sinful act on the presumption that God will forgive you, is to implicate God in your sin, is to say that God is an enabler to you in your evil, and therefore a participant in your evil. It is blasphemy! It is absolute and utter diabolical delusion to think that God’s promise of forgiveness grants you permission to sin. Do not be deceived; God is not mocked: for whatever a man sows, that will he also reap (Galatians 6:7).

            Secondly, some of you might say, “Well, I’ve never done anything like that. I’ve never committed any of the real ‘big’ sins.” And the danger is that you might think that you don’t need to be forgiven for very much because, after all, you’re a pretty good person or, at least, you try to be. If you are thinking like that, then you do not understand the reality of your own depravity, you don’t understand the heinousness of your sins as a hideous offense to the holiness of God, chief of which is self-righteous pride and confidence in your own external morality. If you are thinking like that, then you don’t really understand the gospel. The gospel isn’t for pretty good people who deserve a little slack. The gospel of Jesus Christ is for wretched, helpless, hopeless, disgraceful, disgusting sinners who deserve condemnation. Is the gospel of Jesus Christ for you?

            But then, third: some of you may really be struggling with the shame of your sins. Some of you may have, in fact, committed, literally, sins such as adultery, or fornication, or homosexual practice, or some other sin of sexual immorality; or have been involved in an abortion – and by that I include the father of the child or the parents of the mother – or some other sin such as theft, or a lie which brought great hurt or shame to another person; or any other particularly egregious sinful act which haunts you and torments you with guilt, and burdens you with the thought that you can never really be forgiven; and so you limp through life under the curse of self-condemnation, trying to make up for what you have done. Brother, sister, if your soul is heavy with that kind of guilt and shame and self-condemnation, then please hear and receive and believe the gospel: Christ died for our sins. The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all unrighteousness. God means what He said. He sent His Son into the world to save you from your sins.

Listen: you cannot turn back the hands of time (neither can I), and you cannot undo what you have done (neither can I). But you can turn to the cross of Jesus Christ, and accept what He has done for you; and He has done for you what you and I cannot do for ourselves: He has paid the price for all your sins and mine. He has suffered that punishment due your sins and mine, and He has satisfied the divine justice for your sins and mine, so that you and I might live set free forever from the curse of guilt and the sentence of condemnation. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Through repentance and faith in Christ, we have – we have! – redemption, the forgiveness of sins! (Colossians 1:14).

            Throughout this series, we have seen how the story of David points us to the story and glory of Jesus Christ. Up until now, it has been in the foreshadowing parallels of David’s life; David has been seen somewhat as a forerunner, or proto-type, of Jesus. But not today, not in this chapter. But, nevertheless, even this story of David does point us to the story and the glory of Jesus Christ; because without Jesus, David’s story – and your story and my story – would come to a dead end: an end, dead in trespasses and sins, a wretched, tragic end. David’s story points to the story and glory of Jesus because it shows us David’s need, and our need, of a Redeemer, a Savior: the Son of David, Jesus Christ.

            May the Holy Spirit convict us all – you, and me most of all – of our sins: of their hatefulness, hideousness, and heinousness in the eyes of God. May we be truly awakened to the horrors of our sins, and may the Spirit of God lead us to the cross of Jesus Christ, that with genuine repentance and true faith we may cast ourselves, and all our sins, upon Him; and receive the renewing, redeeming grace and mercy poured forth through His blood, that we might live for the praise of Him who loved us and gave up Himself for us. Amen.