David

Texts: 2 Samuel 11:2-11, 14-17; Acts 13:22,23

Pastor Phil Hughes, American Fork Presbyterian Church, Utah

March 10, 2024   Fourth Sunday in Lent

We are entering the fourth week of Lent, and in the holy season of Lent we remember that we have fallen short of all God has created us to be.  In Lent we remember that God sent his Son because we have all fallen short.  We remember that he didn’t do this in anger but in love and mercy.  And so the cross is our focus in the weeks of Lent because we know the end is the empty tomb. And during Lent we remember that because all have fallen short of who God wants us to be that no one is perfect.  But to be in relationship with God doesn’t require perfection.

Sometimes we are downright stunned at how merciful the Lord can be toward people.  Those we would just as soon write off, surely not ourselves but others who are much worse sinners than we are, are not thrown out by God. In God’s story perfect people aren’t allowed.  God came for the broken, the sinful, those who need his help.

David was the greatest king in all of Israel.  To this day the star of David is a symbol of Jewishness.  It adorns the flag of the modern state of Israel. In Acts David is called a man after God’s own heart, and the apostles preached that the Savior Jesus was descended from David. The Old Testament prophets said the Messiah would come from David’s line.  God promised David that his kingdom would never end. In David, we might expect a shining example of holiness. We might want to think again.

The story goes like this: David had sent the army of Israel off to war.  He was back in Jerusalem because he had people who could handle it and he didn’t need to be out on the battlefield anymore.  The kingdom was prospering and things were good.

One day when he is walking on the roof of the palace he sees a woman bathing and she catches his eye.  More than his eye.  We are told that she is very beautiful. He asks one of his assistants who the woman is and David learns that her name is Bathsheba. She is also married to Uriah.  Uriah is a soldier in David’s army.

In an act of pure power and disregard for anything but lust, the king has Bathsheba brought to him.  He seduces her. David has his way with her and then has her leave. Sometime later she sends word to the king that she is pregnant.  We could stop right there because that is bad enough but it gets worse. David sends for Uriah to come home.

King David wants to find a way to account for the pregnancy of Bathsheba that will clear him.  He doesn’t want responsibility, nor accountability, or any stain on his glorious reputation. He makes light conversation with him, asking about how the war is going, etc.  And then he tells Uriah to head home for a break.  Take a day off. David figures if Uriah goes home, sleeps with his wife, then there is an alibi for her pregnancy.

But that night Uriah doesn’t go home.  The next day when David asks why he didn’t go home to be with his wife Uriah says that with the ark of the Lord in a tent and his fellow comrades out on the battle field he couldn’t go and enjoy himself.  Uriah is too loyal. Loyal to his country and most importantly loyal to his king. David says, “Well, I’ll tell you what.  Stay one more day.”  David invites Uriah to a big feast, gets him drunk, and tells him to go home.  Again, Uriah does not go to be with his wife.

Uriah goes back to the front.  David’s hopes of covering up his blatant lust and act of adultery are ruined.  So, he tells Joab, the commander of his forces to, “Put Uriah out in front where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die.” As if taking another man’s wife isn’t enough, David now plots the husband’s death. In doing so, other men are endangered and die as well.

When Joab sends a servant back to report to David about the battle and that Uriah has died, David replies with tremendous casualness. He says to tell Joab, “Hey, don’t let this get you down.  That’s the way war is.  People die. You’re doing the best you can.  Attack and make an end of the city.”

And we read, “When Uriah’s wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him. After the time of mourning was over, David had her brought to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing David had done displeased the Lord.”[1] Yes, it did.

David thought he had swept the whole thing under the rug. But the Lord knew. The Lord sees our actions.  The Lord knows our lives. There is no hiding.

David has been adulterous.  He acted out of pure lust. He has tried to cover it up with murder.  He has abused his power and taken advantage of innocent people.

It’s a long story and I hope you will go into your Bibles and read everything.  But David’s cover up is not the end. The Lord confront David.  He does it through the priest Nathan. Nathan was the national priest and David’s priest.  He was his personal pastor.  And the LORD tells Nathan to go to David.

Nathan doesn’t rip into David for his evil.  No, Nathan tells a story. It is a story that tugs at the heartstrings. The story is of two men: one rich and the other poor. The rich man had tons of sheep and cattle.  The poor man had one little ewe lamb that he raised, that had grown up with him and his children, that ate his food and drank from his cup and even slept in his arms.  It was like a daughter to him. This one little ewe lamb.

A traveler comes to the rich man and instead of taking one of his multitude of sheep to prepare a meal, he steals the one ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man.  He kills it and makes it for dinner for the guest.

David hears this story and he burns with anger against the rich man.  He swears by the Lord to Nathan and says that the man must die for being so cold-hearted and selfish. David says, “He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”

I don’t know how long it took to say it. I don’t know if he said it immediately or if he allowed for a long pause while he just looked at David, but Nathan says to the king, “You are the man!”

Talk about walking right into it.  You could have heard a pin drop.

David’s rage at the rich man is meant to come right back on him because what he did with Bathsheba and Uriah is exactly what the rich man in that story did by stealing and butchering the little family lamb of the poor man. He satisfied his own desires at the expense of others.

Nathan goes on to say all that the LORD has done for David, how he anointed him king, saved him from Saul, gave him all of Israel and Judah.  He said he would have given him even more.  And so why did David do what he did?  Nathan proclaims a few more things that are consequences David will have to face. David is caught.  We can give him this.  He didn’t rationalize, try to explain, deny or come back at Nathan. David honestly confesses, “I have sinned against the LORD.”[2]

We have seen David victorious over Goliath.  We have seen him escape the clutches of the previous king, Saul.  We have seen him be gracious to people. We have seen him want to build a beautiful temple for the Lord. And now this.

The late pastor and writer Eugene Peterson said that sin stories are all pretty much the same in that they are about us wanting to be gods ourselves, taking charge of our own lives and trying to control the lives of others. David’s sin may not be our sin but we can all say, “I have sinned against the LORD.” And when we say that, like David did, a sin-story can be transformed into a gospel story. We stop looking at others.  We stop giving opinions on what’s wrong with them.  We stop comparing ourselves with them in order to make ourselves look better. We place ourselves front and center before God and admit that we are sinners in need of God’s help.[3]

David wrote Psalm 51 in response to this time in his life.  If you turn to that Psalm there is a small sentence introducing the Psalm that says, “A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.”

Here is part of Psalm 51:

Have mercy on me, O God,
    according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
    blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash away all my iniquity
    and cleanse me from my sin.

3 For I know my transgressions,
    and my sin is always before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
    and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
    and justified when you judge.

Create in me a pure heart, O God,
    and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me from your presence
    or take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation
    and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

No excuses.  No rationalizations. Accepting full responsibility for what he has done. But David knew it was more than asking for forgiveness.  He needed God to do something in him.  He needed a change.  He needed God to create a pure heart in him.

We don’t merely need to be emptied of the things that are against God.  We need to be filled with what is of him. Our hearts need cleansing.  They need to be created anew. We need God’s to work inside of us.

When the Lord told Saul he would be replaced as king, he said that he would replace him with someone after the Lord’s own heart.[4] In the book of Acts the Apostle Paul preaches that David was a man after God’s own heart.  To be after God’s heart is an expression meaning that David pursued the things that please God.

I don’t know if God saw David as pursuing the things of God’s heart in his days as king, or if he saw David growing into that.  Was it before or after this that David was after God’s heart? Did David have to have his own heart broken with his own sin before he actually became a man after God’s own heart?

God can teach us through our failures.  We can become resistant when we go against God, or we can open ourselves to him for a new heart. As painful as it can be for us, the Lord loves broken hearts.  Those are the hearts he can work with.  Those are the hearts that are repentant. Those are the hearts that are humble enough for God to work in.

There are many people who want to be moral.  They call out the wrong and try to fix the issues.  But unless people are changed nothing really changes.

In Lent, we admit the painful truth that I/we are wrong.  It’s not that religious people are right and nonreligious people are wrong.  We are all wrong.  We admit that we have been bullies, taken advantage of people, turned our back to our neighbor, walked away when we could have helped, and lived for ourselves.  We have been victims and we have been victimizers.

If we can’t confess it, we can’t heal it.[5]

I believe when we sing Amazing Grace we sing “that saved a wretch like me.”  Not, “that saved a fairly respectable person like me.”  Not “that saved someone who isn’t as bad as that other guy.”  Not that saved “someone who is trying had and is working on getting it together.”  No, “that saved a wretch like me.” If you can’t confess it, you can’t heal it.

A friend of mine wisely said, “Sin is not the worst thing in the world. The worst thing is a cold, hard heart. The real quality of a soul is revealed, not in the way that it yields to temptation but in the way that it recovers from failure.”[6]

David is forgiven.  He is not excused.  Forgiveness and getting off the hook are not necessarily the same.  There are consequences that David faced for his actions that plagued him the rest of his life.  But he is not forsaken by God.  He is not written out of God’s story.  And neither are we because of our failures whatever they may be.

To be fair, David’s life was not one big train wreck.  This one incident was easily his lowest point.  David honored God is so many ways. All of us have shadows in our lives.  All of us have dark places. Sometimes we underestimate the darkness of our own wrongs.  Other times we have a hard time believing that God’s love in Christ can wipe out our failures.

Paul also preached that it is from David’s line that God brought to Israel the Savior, Jesus Christ. God uses the far-from-perfect to advance his purposes. God’s story is not how good people are blessed by God.  It is the story of a ruined world being redeemed by a loving God. This is the story of the cross.

From the line of an adulterer, murderer, and liar, God came in Christ. Because Jesus didn’t come for the righteous but the sinful.  He came to seek and to save the lost. The thing is there are no purely righteous people. It is all of us with all of our imperfections whom the Lord seeks.

And he doesn’t turn us away in our imperfections.

As John writes in his letter we call 1 John: “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.”[7]

Prayer: Jesus, were it not for your grace who could stand? When we are wrong may we not excuse it but confess it, seek your face, receive your forgiveness, and become the people you want us to be.

Thank you for your mercy that is far greater than our failings.  Amen.

[1] 2 Samuel 11:26-27

[2] 2 Samuel 12:1-13

[3] Leap Over A Wall, p.184-85

[4] 1 Samuel 13:14

[5] This thought comes from something written by Giles Fraser, “Cancel Culture Won’t Save You,” Unherd.com, April 2021

[6] David Roper, In Quietness and Confidence, p.111

[7] I John 2:1-2