Download the Bethlehem Baptist Church Mobile App
Available for iOS and Android
September 1/2, 2012
Jason Meyer | 2 Samuel 11:1-5
In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.
It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned to her house. And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”
Introduction
This is my first sermon in this pulpit after the May 20 vote. Since this is my first sermon as the Associate Pastor for Preaching & Vision, I thought and prayed a lot about what to preach. I wanted to start with something that would set the tone for our future together. So I decided to preach on sin. I hope that does not sound like a downer or a bad punchline. Sin is not a popular topic of conversation and thus it usually meets with some resistance. Let me plead with you to resist this resistance! Here are seven reasons not to stiff-arm the idea of sin.
First, I am a sinner. I am in a highly visible role and it should come as no surprise if my flaws are highly visible also. It seems loving to dash any unrealistic expectations right at the outset.
Second, sin does not cancel our hope; it simply clarifies the source of our hope. The Bible says that we are all sinners. It is perilous to put your hope in sinners because they will fail you by definition! I am not hoping in you and you should not be hoping in me. I said during my candidating time that our website is well named: It is not hopeinJason.org or hopeinJohn.org—it is hopeinGod. I cannot overstate the importance of our corporate hope in God. Let it be a banner forever flying high over our lives.
Third, sin clarifies the specifics of our hope (not just the source). Our hope together is not generic. Our hope is in the gospel. The gospel of a crucified Savior. The gospel of complete satisfaction for all our sin through the perfect sacrifice of Christ. This sacrifice, this gospel, does not make any sense apart from sin. Refusing to acknowledge the existence of sin will cause you to stiff-arm the Savior for sinners.
Fourth, there are external pressures to minimize sin in our day. Pastor John spoke about people with itching ears gathering teachers for themselves that will teach them what they want to hear (2 Timothy 4:3). The itching ears in our day do not like to hear things that make them feel bad. That has become the unforgivable sin from the pulpit. Thou shalt not mess with self-esteem. So they make it very clear that they want to hear “feel good” messages. The only feel-good message we can think of with respect to sin is that there is no sin. Some are not willing to go that far. Sure, no one is perfect—we do bad things sometimes, but that does not mean that we are bad—we are basically good people. This is counterfeit Christianity. The Bible says we do bad things because we are bad.
Therefore, the preacher of counterfeit Christianity heralds a message about a God without wrath bringing people without sin into a kingdom without judgment. The removal of sin removes the very guts of what makes the gospel good news.
Fifth, we also recognize that there are internal pressures to minimize sin. We are sinners and we do not like to own our sin. It can make us uncomfortable or make us feel defensive and cornered. I pray that we will not stiff-arm the word of God today, but hold our arms open to receive his life-giving word.
Sixth, stiff-arming sin will leave you without an explanation for what is wrong with the world. The doctrine of the Fall makes an impact on every area of creation. How do you explain the horrors of this life like rape and children that die in infancy? How do you explain diseases like cancer? What is your answer to what is wrong with the world? A lack of education? The rulers that commit genocides do not do evil because they are dumb and do not know any better.
Seventh, stiff-arming sin will leave you without an explanation for what is right with the world. If sin is real, why do we have anything good? Can we take credit for it? The Fall actually gives us a reason to be thankful. I know that sounds a little backward, but hear me out. James 1:13 addresses the source of evil. It says that no one should shift the blame to God for his sin because God is not a sinner and is not even tempted by evil. James 1:14 says that we are to blame for sin. We are tempted by sin and then commit sin.
James 1:16 goes further and addresses the source of good. James gives a warning not to be deceived. We need this warning because we are far too prone to take credit for good and shift the blame for evil. “Do not be deceived, every good gift and every perfect gift comes from above” (James 1:16)—common grace—the things we have in common that we cannot take for granted really are “grace.” To understand them as gifts it would be good to frequently relinquish your rights to them (sunshine, rain, a job, a car, a house, healthy children, personal health, persecution, life and breath). We relinquish them as a right in order to receive them back as undeserved gifts.
Prayer
The mercy of our God is where all of our hope begins. This great promise of the gospel begins in Genesis 3:15. God gives this promise in response to humanity’s fall into sin. Ever since the fall of Adam and Eve, humanity has been waiting for the Redeemer to arrive and crush the serpent’s seed. The book of Genesis ends with a prophecy of a deliverer with a royal scepter (Genesis 49). Who is this royal seed that will rise up? We keep reading until we get to 1 Samuel. It reads as if it will be David. In 2 Samuel 10–12, we see (1) David’s rise (2 Samuel 10), (2) David’s fall (2 Samuel 11), and (3) David’s redemption (2 Samuel 12). Let’s take them one at a time.
First, a little bit of background. David’s rise takes place after Saul’s fall. Saul had a somewhat precocious beginning and then quickly crashed and burned. The Spirit of God rushed upon Saul and he prophesied (1 Samuel 10) and then the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him again as he led Israel against the Ammonites (1 Samuel 11). The Ammonites loom large in the narrative of Samuel. The king of the Ammonites is an ominous figure because his name, Nahash, is the Hebrew word for “serpent.” Saul defeats the serpent king, but any hopes that he is the Messiah are quickly dashed when makes an unlawful sacrifice, thus rejecting the word of the Lord, and the Lord rejects him as king (1 Samuel 13).
David is anointed as king in 1 Samuel 16. The next chapter features David crushing the skull of a Philistine giant and thus evoking the imagery of Genesis 3:15. David’s rise as king culminates in his defeat of the king of the Ammonites, named as the son of Nahash. The parallels are striking in that both Saul and David conquering the Ammonite “serpent.”
Transition
Any hopes that David is the Messiah are about to be decisively dashed. David’s reign of righteousness is about to turn into a reign of terror. The author wants to take us back to Genesis 3, but we arrive at Genesis 3:6, not Genesis 3:15. David is cast here not as the Messianic seed, but as Eve.
Sin is a horror show. Nothing should scare us more than our sin. There are four ominous notes that we hear in this chapter that cause us to sit on the edge of our seat with horror. I want us to hear these four notes sound clearly and offer a word of application for each one as well.
Note #1: The opening note struck in David’s fall is that he is in the wrong place at the wrong time. David in a sense here was just asking for trouble. At the time “when kings go to war,” David sent others and stayed himself. David was alone, separated from accountability and alone with his sin. You should almost hear the creepy music of the horror scene starting (like it does in the movies).
Application: Sometimes the first step toward victory over sin is the step away from it. Remove yourself from the situation. Don’t turn on the TV to that station. Don’t walk by that section of the store that has the magazines. Don’t put yourself in situations that cause small compromises. It is easier to keep sin out if you do not invite it in (story of seminary student circling around the strip clubs).
Note #2: Another note of terror is actually a familiar refrain from Genesis 3. This refrain demonstrates that David is not the Savior of Genesis 3:15, but the sinner of Genesis 3:6. Genesis 3 is often known as the “fall” of humanity. Notice that this “fall” narrative features three words coming together:
The woman “saw” that the tree was “good/beautiful” for food … and she “took” of its fruit (Genesis 3:6). Judgment followed as Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden.
However, not as many readers of Scripture catch that other places in Scripture also contain what could be called a “fall” narrative. There is one other place in Genesis where these three terms appear together.
The sons of God “saw” that the daughters of man were “beautiful.” And they “took” as their wives any they chose (Genesis 6:2). Judgment follows as God brings a flood that destroys the earth with water.
2 Samuel 11 is the only other place in the Hebrew Bible where these three terms show up in this way. Let’s read it again (2 Samuel 11:1–5)
David “saw” from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very “beautiful”… So David sent messengers and “took” her (2 Samuel 11:2–4).
Application: Here the root of sin is unbelief. Paul said that covetousness is idolatry. We are failing to trust that God is for us. Failing to trust that God is our all-sufficient treasure. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly before him. Eve doubted the goodness of God. She thought he was withholding something. He was not fully for them and their joy. She needed to take matters into her own hands. Do not turn the goodness of God’s creation against him. Using the beauty of his gifts to doubt the goodness of the Giver is one of Satan’s oldest tricks.
Note #3: The destructiveness of sin is on display in David’s fall. Unchecked, unconfessed breezes of sin will build into a full-blown hurricane. Sin begins with a quiet note of morality (concern for ritual purity), but this is in dissonance with the adultery already hatched in David’s heart. The breeze continues to build until it becomes a full-blown plan and action. David sends for Bathsheba. One irony here is how scrupulous Bathsheba is to keep the ritual purity law and then how she and David callously break the law of moral and sexual purity!
Sin continues to pick up a head of steam as David tries to hide his sin. It blows harder as David hatches a new plan to cover up his sin. He tries to trick Uriah, but Uriah’s righteousness and concern for his fellow soldiers stands in stark contrast with David’s unrighteousness and lack of concern for the soldiers in harm’s way.
This hurricane blew over Uriah and brought Joab into the torrent along with the death of other soldiers. They even feared David’s former commitment to limit the risk of human death and hatched a plan of their own concerning how to break the news to David. Yet David passed judgment on all of it as good.
Application: Refuse to believe the lie that our sinful choices really do not impact other people. We do not sin in a vacuum. Our hurricane of sin will blow into the path of others and wreak havoc. This text shows the terror of poetic justice. David used the sword; God uses the sword against his family. Family sin and generational sin is one of the scariest realities to me.
Refuse to believe the lie that sin will shrink over time if left alone. It grows. The leaven principle applies to homes and churches. A little bit of leaven will work through the whole lump. Do not make peace with sin.
Note #4: Sin causes you to be a moral fool. Sin caused David to call things good that God calls evil (vs. 25, 27). A more literal translation will help us see the shocking word play. The king is supposed to adopt and enforce God’s laws. Instead David says, “don’t let this thing be evil in your eyes” (v. 25). The narrator says, “the thing that David had done was evil in Yahweh’s eyes” (v. 27).
Application: Refuse to believe the lie that sin is only serious if we get caught. Part of being a moral fool is believing the lie that sin can be hidden. One can feel like they are off the hook simply because they have not been caught. As one commentator says, we must not confuse God’s silence with sightlessness.
Transition
Saul’s sin and David’s sin are cast in similar terms. The nature of their sin and their confession of sin is similar in form:
Saul’s Sin (1 Samuel 15) and David’s Sin (2 Samuel 12)
Rejecting/Despising the Word of the Lord
Admittance of Sin
However, this is where the similarities stop. What happens next is somewhat unexpected. Praise God that sin never gets the last word in Scripture.
The gift of rebuke. The grace of sending! I love the very first verse of chapter 12. The Lord “sent” Nathan to David. This sending is grace! The word for “sent” was used 12 times in chapter 11 (David sent, Joab sent, Bathsheba sent), but it was never grace and never accomplished anything good. God never sent in chapter 11. Chapter 12 is like the turning point in Ephesians 2:3—“But God.” Notice that God’s grace here flowed through someone else and did not come to David by God zapping him with personal insight. He gives grace sometimes by sending others. Nathan wisely and boldly rebuked David. He boldly rebukes the king of Israel because he has been sent by the king of heaven. He wisely rebukes David as he tells the former shepherd a story about a rich man with a lot of sheep stealing and killing a poor man’s only sheep. He then used David’s judicial sentiment against him.
Application: Let us develop a culture of rebuke. Formative discipline exists in the body to keep us from corrective church discipline. The deception of sin is the scariest part of sin to me. It blurs our moral vision and sometimes leaves us blind to realities that other people find obvious. Can I make an observation? That phrase becomes a code word to give someone an open door to speak about something they see that we may not. If we are going to do that, then the one making the observation needs to guard against assigning motives. We do not know our own hearts very well, let alone the hearts of others. Tell people what we see and have them prayerfully search their heart to see. The trust factor has to be high here and must develop overtime. This is sensitive work—you are not going to trust a surgeon’s knife to random people that you do not know. You entrust a surgeon’s knife to a surgeon. Accountability can flourish only with high levels of trust in the family of faith.
Transition
We should not come to 2 Samuel 10 and say here David was a good man—let’s all be good. We do not come to 2 Samuel 11 and say here David was a bad man—let’s not be bad.” We can develop ethics from Scripture but only built when they are built first upon the foundation of salvation by grace through faith. This story takes us to the very headline of Scripture concerning Jesus’ victory.
Redemption in Christ: Pillars Undergirding the move from 2 Samuel to Christ
Pillar 1: Why David Remains as King (God’s Faithfulness to His Word)
Compare the parallels between Saul and David at this point. Both Saul and David confess their sin, but only David’s sin is pardoned.
We should marvel at this point that God does not remove the kingship from David. Remember that Saul’s kingdom was ripped away from him. Why is David different? Some assume that David’s repentance is the reason why David was forgiven. Certainly his repentance was real. One cannot read Psalm 51 without feeling the depths of David’s sorrow over his sin. But Paul tells us that repentance is a gift (2 Timothy 2:24–26). This text does not stress David’s repentance. We must look for an answer in the flow of the narrative. It seems that a better understanding for why David is not removed from his kingly duties is because God made a covenant with him (2 Samuel 7) and God does not break his promises! Thus, this is a story about God’s faithfulness to his word, not David’s faithfulness to repent!
Pillar 2: The cross is the only way to reconcile the tension between the demand for justice and our desire for mercy.
Jesus is the one that takes the tensions in the text and gives them sweet resolution. Do you ever feel this tension? If you are like me, when you are speeding and you see a cop, you usually hope for mercy, not justice. What a tricky cop—why do they hide in places like that? However, when someone recklessly passes you going Mach 7, now suddenly you want justice. Where is a cop when you need one? Do you feel the tension and inconsistency?
We come to the same question when we hear God tell David that he won’t die. Justice was not served. Uriah’s father would not have been pleased with that verdict. How can God show mercy to sinners and still preserve justice?
Our judicial sentiment can be turned against us here. Fathers, imagine if someone raped and killed your daughter. Most men feel an intense, ferocious felt-need at this point for justice. No father would stand for it if a rapist and murderer appeared before the judge and then said, “I am really, really, really sorry” and then the judge said, “that is good enough for me.” Your moral outrage would now be directed at both the murderer and the unjust judge.
God is not an unjust judge. Let no one conceive of a God who sweeps sin under the rug of the universe. How does God judge sin and yet show mercy to sinners? The gospel! God put Jesus forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins” (Romans 3:25). I will never forget Pastor John using the example of David and Bathsheba when he was preaching on Romans 3. The demands of justice are not met when someone says sorry. The only place in the universe where the demands of justice and the desire for mercy meet together is at the cross. Our souls find perfect and complete rest there in the rightness of justice and the sweetness of mercy. What a pillar!
Pillar 3: There is only one without a Fall narrative.
2 Samuel 11 proves that we should not make much of David. Why would the author of 2 Samuel paint David’s sin with Bathsheba in the dark colors derived from the Genesis fall narrative? To answer that question, I want to give an example from the world of classical music.
Benjamin Zander believes that no one is tone deaf. In a lecture on classical music, he gives an example from a piece from Chopin. He plays a series of notes: B A G F… E. As we listen to Chopin, we are supposed to follow the line from B to E. Along the way there are “wrong” notes struck that do not bring the piece to resolution. He calls these notes “false cadence.” Once he plays the note of “E” there is resolution—moving from “B” to “E” brings the hearer to a place that Zander calls “home.” This is the note we have been waiting for from the composer.
The Fall in Genesis 3 also introduces a “note” of promise in Genesis 3:15. A seed of the woman will come and crush the head of the seed of the serpent. This is the note we are waiting for. The rest of the Bible reads like an audience anxiously listening for that note to be played. People come on the scene in the subsequent narrative that raise our expectations—could this be the one we have been waiting for? Cain quickly shows that he is not the fulfillment—he is a seed of the serpent (Genesis 4:8; 1 John 3:10, 12). Those born in the line of promise also prove to be false hopes. Noah sins with the fruit of the vine (Genesis 9:20–21) just like Adam and Eve in the beginning.
Joshua is tricked by the “cunning” of the Gibeonites (Joshua 9:4), just like Adam and Eve were tricked by the craftiness of the serpent. All of the heroes God raises up are flawed and play false notes.
The New Testament presents us with a sweeping and universal fall narrative for humanity in Romans 3 and Ephesians 2. We all were dead in transgressions and sins (Ephesians 2:1) and there is no one righteous, not even one (Romans 3:9). We all play the wrong note. David is no different.
David’s rise to power throughout Samuel is an amazing story with many feats of faith, not least of which involves crushing and cutting off the head of a Philistine giant (1 Samuel 17). The reader that has begun to wonder: “is this the one we have been waiting for?” The wrong note sounds loud and clear in 2 Samuel 11. David’s fall brings disastrous consequences in the rest of 2 Samuel. The reader is left to wait for the Son of David mentioned in 2 Samuel 7.
Therefore, the story of humanity hinges upon the one person in history that never had a fall narrative: Jesus of Nazareth. He is not only the “note” we have anxiously waiting for from the Creator/Composer; He himself is the Creator/Composer who wrote himself into the story. We must read Scripture in the light of God the Father’s plan to make much of Jesus.
Conclusion
The connection between humility and hope should be somewhat obvious at this point. God crushes our pride by reminding us of our fall narrative. O how many times we play the wrong note! We only boast only in Christ because the One without a Fall narrative bore the wrath for those who do. Amazing grace!
“The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost” (1 Timothy 1:15).
This is the Scripture I have hanging in my office. I can always see where I fit into the verse. I am not cast into the role of Savior. In fact, I will stiff-arm my Savior as long as I fight the fact that I am a sinner. I am put in my place as a sinner so that I will embrace my Savior without reservation and without delay every day of my life.
All other human hopes fail as well when they rest on anyone with a Fall narrative. Our hope rests securely in Christ—in him the note sounds, the story reaches fulfillment, and our souls find rest. Therefore, we boast in him, find our identity in him, and rest in him.
The effects of the Fall plague us at every step of our journey. We fight against it even as Christians and appear to lose the fight at the end of our life. Story of my Grandpa: More ferocious for the gospel even as the Fall became more destructive. The outer man was wasting away, but the inner man was ferociously fighting back with the gospel (being renewed day by day). He hoped and rested in Christ alone for his salvation. It led him to want Christ alone to be proclaimed at his funeral. I want you to preach at my funeral. Do not boast in me. There is someone in heaven that we boast in alone. Preach on the parable of the lost son, because I was lost, but the Lord found me.
Joni Erickson Tada is a paraplegic because of a diving accident when she was a young woman. Well-intentioned people say to her, I bet you are excited to go to heaven, you know, so you can run again. She said, “Yes that will be great.” But what I am really looking forward to is having a heart free from sin.”
Only one king is great enough to remove sin forever. It was not David. He fell prey to sin. He even says that he was sinful from birth. Jesus’ supernatural virgin birth means that he was not born as a sinner. He lived a perfect live. He died to crush the power of sin to condemn. He will come again to throw Satan and even sin itself into the lake of fire.
How great is our Savior. He cannot blend into the background at Bethlehem Baptist church like background noise. He is not someone that we will merely mention. The cross must be something that we own because it has taken ownership of us. “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” Please hear Paul’s words that follow: “We are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” The next verse says that you can be reconciled to God because “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:13–14, 20–21).
David’s fall came because he took something that God had never given him (1 Samuel 12:7–9). God stresses all that he had given David. He said he would even give more. Yet David took what he had not been given. He despised the word of the Lord and did what was evil in his sight (12:9).
Our redemption comes when we take what God has given us. We would despise the word of the Lord if we refused to take God’s only Son when he has been given to us. Let us plead with the Lord that he will cause light to shine in the hearts of those who are blind to the unparalleled, exquisite beauty of our Lord! Do you see? Maybe your eyes have been opened for the first time. Dear friend, run to Him. God did not spare his only Son. Take him—lay hold of the gift of salvation by faith. Lay hold of the gift of himself.