Sadly, one of the most powerful preachers in my lifetime didn’t heed the warning of one of the most profound and truthful statements he ever made.  Ravi Zacharias famously preached,

 “Sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.”

The life work of the man who said that has literally been erased because he didn’t heed his own advice.  When given the opportunity to confess his sin and repent, he doubled down on the lies and deception.  As a result, not only did he take his denial to his grave, but his family, which could have had the blessing of inheriting and continuing one of the most powerful evangelistic ministries in the world, had to remove every book, podcast, and sermon he ever preached and essentially close the doors on a ministry that could have changed lives for generations to come.  A man whose name would have gone down in history beside people like Billy Graham, Dwight Moody, and Charles Spurgeon will instead be at most remembered as a sex addict who even sued a woman who went to the board of his ministry to confront him about how he had sexually abused her; an accusation that surfaced in 2017 and turned out to be entirely true when, after his death, the board of his ministry finally decided to hire a firm to do a thorough investigation.¹https://www.christianitytoday.com/2021/02/ravi-zacharias-rzim-investigation-sexual-abuse-sexting-rape/ Instead of taking the opportunities God gave him to repent and potentially salvage the work of his ministry for future generations, he literally ran it all right into the grave with him.

Some of you might be wondering why I started this sermon on such a dark and heavy note. Well, that’s where our study of 2 Samuel is taking us today. Given all the amazing things we know about David and his love for God, the story of 2 Samuel 11 is absolutely shocking, but it’s vital that we fully understand it, or we risk the same thing happening in our lives.

2 Samuel 11 is the story of the total moral failure of David and the steps he took to accomplish it, steps that turn out to be the same steps we can take at any given moment in our life; steps that some of you may be taking right now as you listen to me preach this sermon.

2 Samuel 11 outlines the four typical steps of moral failure.

This first typical step of moral failure isn’t sin; it’s just the opportunity.

Step One – A nonmoral circumstance presents an opportunity to make an immoral decision. 

Two nonmoral circumstances set up the opportunity for David’s moral failure.

By “nonmoral,” I mean there was nothing right or wrong about these circumstances; they just created an opportunity for David to do something deeply immoral.

 The first nonmoral circumstance was that,

David delegated the leadership of the army to Joab so he could remain in Jerusalem. 

 1 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.

This is not the first time Joab has led the army without David. In the previous chapter, Joab did the same and did so with great success.  Therefore, I find myself aligning with the commentators who see this as the occasion of the failure rather than a cause.  It is a flawed view of the labor of a king to assume that a king of a nation the size of Israel needed to be leading his army on the battlefield as if there was nothing else a king needed to do.  David was King, meaning he had an entire nation to run, and that implicitly involved more things than going off to fight a battle.  For instance, David couldn’t negotiate trade relationships for Israel if he was off fighting a battle.

Furthermore, when David sent Israel off to war under Joab, he was sending them off under the leadership of one of the most battle-tested and feared generals in the region. He was sending them off to conquer a much smaller kingdom—the Ammonites, a people Joab had already successfully led Israel into battle against the prior year. Last week, we studied 2 Samuel 10, and in it, King Hanun threatened Israel when he added 33,000 Syrian mercenaries to his army.  When David found out about it, he immediately instructed Joab to lead Israel’s army into battle and defeat the threat, a battle Joab won without losing a single Israeli soldier!  As soon as Joab realized they were trapped between the Ammonites in front of them and the Syrians behind them, Joab split his forces and attacked each with such speed that both ended up running away in retreat! So, my point is that I don’t think it is necessary to suggest there was some sort of dereliction of duty by David or a sign of spiritual weakness in him because he didn’t lead Israel into battle.  In fact, I would argue that David was actually exemplifying great leadership.  Joab was more than qualified to lead the army into this battle, and as such, it allowed David to remain in Jerusalem and focus on other things that would help Israel prosper.

Therefore, David leading the army or not leading the army was completely a nonmoral decision in that it was neither moral nor immoral. It literally misses the point if you make anything in this chapter about that decision.  However, what is essential about it is that it meant that one of David’s neighbors, who was a key commander in David’s army, was also off with Joab fighting the Ammonites.

“It was normal for military enterprises to cease in the winter months, so David resumed his operations against Ammon In the spring. V 1 does not imply that David’s duty was to accompany the army. His presence in person was hardly necessary when an Israelite victory was so certain. The Ammonites’ army was quickly destroyed and their capital city ”²Payne, D. F. (1994). 1 and 2 Samuel. In D. A. Carson, R. T. France, J. A. Motyer, & G. J. Wenham (Eds.), New Bible commentary: 21st century edition (4th ed., p. 327). Inter-Varsity Press.

“Because of the undoubtedly true stories in 1 Samuel about David’s skill as a warrior, we readers have a tendency to think that he was always superior to Joab as a field general, and therefore ought to always be the leader of Israel’s armies. Yet David clearly preferred to have Joab lead the troops in key battles, such as the first one against the Ammonites.’”³Hoffner, H. A., Jr. (2015). 1 & 2 Samuel (Vol. 2, p. 409). Lexham Press.

The second nonmoral circumstance is seen in verse two.

While enjoying the view of Jerusalem from his rooftop, David coincidentally noticed a woman bathing. 

 2 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.

 The phrase “it happened” is a very clear indicator from the text that this was not planned by either party. There is no intentionality suggested, but quite the opposite!  It just happened!

Despite what some attempt to read into this story, there’s nothing at all in the text that even remotely suggests David had any sinister plan of the flesh in his mind when he decided to take a walk on his roof. This was very likely something he did on a regular basis.  In the Middle East, it was, and still is in many places, extremely common to build your house with a flat roof and use it as we would a deck or a porch.  Furthermore, it’s not far-fetched at all to assume David’s house is likely taller than other houses, and thus, why he could look down into other people’s homes.  Again, there’s nothing sinister in this because David is the King, and as such, it’s very likely that the house the King of Tyre built David was very likely an ancient mansion of sorts, a palace that was clearly set apart from all the other houses in Jerusalem!

The text also says nothing of the woman doing anything sinister in that she somehow knew when David was going to walk on his roof and was hoping to tempt him. Not that Bathsheba needed to be justified to take a bath in her own house, but in verse four, you will see that she was doing so in obedience to the Mosaic Law that required a woman to bathe after her menstrual cycle!  It’s surprising, and frankly alarming, that some commentators want to assert that Bathsheba was somehow sexually mischievous because the text gives us no indication of that at all, and thus, we should be extremely leery of giving that assumption any credit.  The fact of the matter is that the text says that David just “happened” to see her—nothing more and nothing less!

 This is how temptation works on so many occasions. It starts with circumstances that are totally nonmoral.  In this case, there is nothing wrong with David not leading his army against the Ammonites; there’s nothing wrong with him taking a walk on his roof; in fact, they built it so he could, and there’s nothing wrong with Bathsheba taking a bath in the place set aside in her home to take a bath!   Furthermore, there was certainly nothing wrong with her being beautiful!  Blaming your sexual lust on another person’s beauty is like blaming McDonald’s for why you have high cholesterol or blaming Krispy Kreme for you having diabetes!

 Finally, there’s not even anything inherently sinful about seeing a person’s nakedness (i.e., doctors, nurses, first responders), but what our minds do with it is where sin erupts.In this case, there was no medical or any other professional reason for David to see her nakedness. However, he still didn’t need to feel guilty about seeing her nakedness because it was clearly innocently coincidental.

However, instead of submitting to the leadership of the Spirit in his life who would lead David to obey the Law of Love and, as such, respect the privacy and dignity of the woman, as well as the woman’s husband, and thus not only turn his eyes away from what he saw but equally important turn his heart away from what he saw; David instead did the opposite. David had been filled with the Holy Spirit in 1 Samuel 16, so there is no doubt at all that he felt the conviction of the Holy Spirit to let go of what he saw, but he ignored that conviction and mentally grabbed ahold of the temptation.

 This leads us to step two of moral failure.

 Step Two – Instead of fleeing temptation, we entertain 

 If David’s heart were in the right place, he would have simply no longer looked in that direction, spoken nothing of it, and moved on with his evening. However, instead of turning away from the inevitable thoughts a man would likely have if he saw a beautiful woman bathing, David chose to capture those thoughts and explore them further.  The Bible states,

3 And David sent and inquired about the woman.

Now, I can’t say this for a fact, but it is highly likely that David’s mansion was not built in the hood of Jerusalem. Instead, it was likely surrounded by the houses of successful businessmen and the top-tier government and military leaders of Israel. Therefore, David knew that the woman he saw was either the unmarried daughter of a person of significant influence in Israel or the wife of one.

But the more significant point here is that his inquiry was the opposite of letting the immoral thoughts running around in his mind pass, the opposite of fleeing temptation; he was running right at it! There was nothing at all innocent about what David did in verse three. Wisdom was screaming at the top of its lungs at David to do the opposite of what he just did, and those shouts got even louder with the answer he received from one of his servants.  The Bible states,

And one said, "Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?"

There seemed to be some shock that David needed to ask who the woman was. The response has a note of disbelief.  “Is not this …” is rhetorical in that the servant responds to David’s inquiry with a question that assumes David would already know the answer!   David “may” have rightly claimed not to recognize who he had seen, but the response shows us that once her name was mentioned, he should have easily recalled it.

“Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam …” is a clear indication that David had likely previously met Bathsheba and known that she was the daughter of Eliam. Furthermore, and even more importantly, when the servant said, “Is not this Bathsheba, … the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" the servant was clearly suggesting David well knew who Uriah was and that he was married to Bathsheba.  In other words, David may have genuinely had a lapse in memory and forgot who it was he had seen from his rooftop, but he couldn’t claim to have never known!  The servant’s response was a reminder of what David already knew, not a delivery of something he didn’t!

“She is first identified as “Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam,” which might indicate Bathsheba’s upper-class status. Eliam was the son of Ahithophel (2 Sam 23:34), who was David’s counselor (see 2 Sam 15:12). If her identification had ended there, she would have been available without the need for subterfuge or the violation of Yahweh’s law. The messengers could have gone to her house with an offer of marriage to the king. Yet Bathsheba isn’t just Eliam’s daughter; she is also Uriah’s wife."⁴Hoffner, H. A., Jr. (2015). 1 & 2 Samuel (Vol. 2, p. 413). Lexham Press.

The point is that faith can be really easy to push aside sometimes, especially when we’ve already turned from it in our hearts so that we can turn to sin. However, it’s an entirely different level of rebellion when we drive right past the flashing warning lights and run right over the speed bumps God graciously puts in front of us to tell us we are headed for destruction. Letting go of our faith to grab ahold of sin is of itself a choice to exchange life for death, which is insanity, so how much more insane is it when we then also ignore the lights flashing in our eyes, the sound of horns blaring in our ears, and the jarring of our body as we run over the rumble strips and speed bumps that remove all the uncertainty of where our path is headed?

Bathsheba is married to one of his loyal military leaders! There couldn’t be any brighter and more obnoxiously noticeable warning lights, louder sirens, or larger speed bumps to warn David of where he was headed!  Now, understand I’m not suggesting that if Bathsheba weren’t the wife of a significant man in Israel that David would be justified in continuing to submit to his sexually immoral thoughts and desires.  But I am suggesting that in clearly knowing she was the wife of a prominent person in Israel, a leader he was closely connected with, David should have been equipped with all the practical accountability he needed to let go of the sexually immoral thoughts in his mind!

It’s amazing how we dabble with sin as if it makes sense. An alcoholic who justifies going to a bar knowing that the real reason he’s there is so he can fantasize about the opportunity of getting drunk, to feel the rush of getting as close to the thing he desires as possible all while telling himself it’s for some other reason.  The same is true of people walking into an affair.  They know their heart is starting to desire more than the professional relationship or normal friendship with that person at work, the spouse of their friend, the person they see at the gym, the neighbor they interact with, or that old friend from high school they reconnected with on social media.  But instead of acknowledging the desire of their heart for what it is, sin, and as such, doing whatever is necessary to no longer allow their heart and mind to go down that path, they instead find some way to justify taking one more step; to justify one more conversation; one more look; one more immoral thought or fantasy, until one day they find themselves ready to take a step they would have previously never imagined they would actually do—step three.

 The third step of moral failure is not the product of step one but of step two.

Step Three – We surrender to the temptation.

4 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.

Now some commentators suggest David raped Bathsheba, that is, that she was completely unwilling to participate in this act of adultery. This, however, seems to be an overstep of the text. We are not taking anything away from the fact that Scripture squarely blames David for this entire affair if we also point out that there is no mention of Bathsheba ever trying to convince David to do otherwise, and this would not be without precedence.  In a few weeks, we are going to see the story of a woman who was raped by her brother, and the text makes it very clear that she tried to get him to stop.  In this story, however, it appears that Bathsheba was flattered by the desires of the King and willfully embraced him.

“Bathsheba’s morality could, perhaps, also be questioned but the biblical author puts all the blame on David: David was the king, and was acting in a very high-handed fashion, abusing his power and position.”⁵Payne, D. F. (1994). 1 and 2 Samuel. In D. A. Carson, R. T. France, J. A. Motyer, & G. J. Wenham (Eds.), New Bible commentary: 21st century edition (4th ed., p. 327). Inter-Varsity Press.

“It is worth noticing that there is no hint that Bathsheba put up any resistance to the seduction. This may conceivably be a measure of her helplessness before the power of the king. Throughout the entire story she remains a passive participant. The focus of blame is entirely upon David, which in view of his position is entirely reasonable. It would, however, be quite wrong to conclude that she was an ‘innocent victim’. True holiness may have a cost, but it never has a price. That Bathsheba is portrayed as a kind of pawn may well be a comment on her attitude to marital fidelity.”⁶Keddie, G. J. (1990). Triumph of the King: The Message of 2 Samuel (pp. 95–96). Evangelical Press.

“Did Bathsheba have a choice? Could she have resisted? Waltke and Yu assume that she could have cried out for help, and on the basis of Deut 22:23–27 they consider her equally guilty with David. D. Wright concurs, writing: ‘[T]here is no show of reluctance on [Bathsheba’s] part. This is in marked contrast, as several readers have noted, to Tamar’s strong protestations against Amnon only two chapters away (13:12–13). Moreover, the idiom for the deed, šaḵaḇ ʿim ‘lie with’, in 11:4 is not accompanied by any other verb indicating force. It has been noted, too, that the woman’s complicity is needed for David to succeed in getting Uriah to go to his house to party with Bathsheba, a situation that might hint at her willingness in regard to events earlier in the story.’ If she indeed consented, then according to Lev 20:10 and Deut 22:24 she as well as David should have been put to death. Others, emphasizing the literal meaning “sent and took her,” argue that she had no choice, and that David here abused his royal power to simply expropriate what he wanted, much as King Ahab later did with Naboth’s vineyard.”⁷Hoffner, H. A., Jr. (2015). 1 & 2 Samuel (Vol. 2, pp. 416–417). Lexham Press.

 This leads to the fourth step of moral failure, which is ironically more consequential and devastating than the initial step.

 Step Four – Instead of confessing and repenting, we try to cover it up. 

Interestingly, moral failure takes little to no effort to figure out how to commit, but the cover-up takes everything a person has within them to maintain the lies they tell themselves, hide their emotions, and ensure their sin is buried behind a layer of lies. It has to be significant that it only takes 4 verses to tell us about the failure but then there are 22 verses about the cover-up.

They find themselves either trapped in an endless cycle of making sure that they, or anyone else, never does or says anything that exposes them, or they take the careless route of assuming it will just never come out! However, the fact of the matter is that the longer their moral failure stays hidden, the more it takes root, grows, and bears the fruit of death into their life and those around them.  Whether you want to admit it or not, your unconfessed moral failure is rotting your soul and the relationships you claim to be protecting in hiding it.

However, in David’s case, God gave both he and Bathsheba a very real opportunity to confess their sin and seek restoration. It was a massively consequential and highly embarrassing opportunity. Still, nonetheless, it was an opportunity to escape the death they were creating. As hard as it would have been to confess what they had done and repent, they were nonetheless given a huge chance to escape!  In verse five, the Bible says,

 5 And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, "I am pregnant."

The moment of truth has arrived. You can’t cover up pregnancy, but in a day and age where there was no such thing as a DNA test, you might be able to deny you were the father.  However, David had two problems.  David’s inner circle of leaders, as well as David’s servants, all knew that he and Bathsheba had sex, but even more significant was the fact that Bathsheba’s husband had been off with Joab fighting the Ammonites, and when he left she wasn’t pregnant.  How do we know that? Well, D.F. Payne wrote,

“The note in v 4 about her uncleanness means that she had recently menstruated, so that without doubt the pregnancy was due to David’s adultery with her.”⁸Payne, D. F. (1994). 1 and 2 Samuel. In D. A. Carson, R. T. France, J. A. Motyer, & G. J. Wenham (Eds.), New Bible commentary: 21st century edition (4th ed., p. 327). Inter-Varsity Press.

So, what was David going to do? Was he going to be a man and own up to his failure or double down and try to cover it up?  Sadly, he chose the latter, resulting in an evil nobody could have ever imagined possible from a man like David.  The Bible says,

 6 So David sent word to Joab, "Send me Uriah the Hittite." And Joab sent Uriah to David. 7 When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab was doing and how the people were doing and how the war was going. 8 Then David said to Uriah, "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. 9 But 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.

“The invitation to go home and ‘wash [his] feet’ was a warmly-delivered encouragement (possibly even a euphemistic innuendo?) for Uriah to relieve himself of the sexual abstinence customarily required of soldiers while on a campaign (1 Samuel 21:5).”⁹Keddie, G. J. (1990). Triumph of the King: The Message of 2 Samuel (p. 101). Evangelical Press.

“It is possible that David’s suggestion to Uriah that he should wash his feet (8) refers to a ritual that would release him from this oath.”¹⁰Payne, D. F. (1994). 1 and 2 Samuel. In D. A. Carson, R. T. France, J. A. Motyer, & G. J. Wenham (Eds.), New Bible commentary: 21st century edition (4th ed., p. 327). Inter-Varsity Press.

“And then there was the “gift” (מַשְׂאֵת, mas'eth) from the king that followed him out of the throne room. This suggested that the king himself acknowledged that Uriah was not under battlefield restrictions.”¹¹Hoffner, H. A., Jr. (2015). 1 & 2 Samuel (Vol. 2, p. 418). Lexham Press.

This is disgusting. Instead of bringing Uriah off the battlefield to admit what had taken place, David acted like he was genuinely interested in Uriah’s perspectives on how things were going.  David then sent Uriah to his house with some sort of gift that was seemingly intended to say to Uriah that he was removed from his battlefield obligations and thus could ethically have sex with his wife.  Clearly, David was looking for a way to deny the affair and say that Bathsheba’s child was simply born earlier than normal.  But David’s deceptive plans to cover up his sin were ironically thwarted by Uriah’s loyalty to God, Israel, and his brothers, who were still off fighting the Ammonites.

10 When they told David, "Uriah did not go down to his house," David said to Uriah, "Have you not come from a journey? Why did you not go down to your house?" 11 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? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing."

 As a pastor, I can say there is nothing any more convicting than hearing your own sermon preached at you. So, ironically, David himself had once said something strikingly similar to what Uriah had just said to him.  David, who was now fully driven by his desire to protect his own reputation, had been a man who, like Uriah, was more concerned about God’s reputation and the people he served.  In 2 Samuel 7, we read,

1 Now when the king lived in his house and the LORD had given him rest from all his surrounding enemies, 2 the king said to Nathan the prophet, "See now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells in a tent." (2 Samuel 7:1-2)

 So again, here was another clear chance to repent! Can you imagine what went through David’s mind as he heard the words of his own heart for God coming from Uriah, a man who wasn’t even Jewish?  What a moment for David to fall on his knees and confess his sin to God and Uriah!  But instead, David doubled down on his planned deception and dug the hole even deeper.

 12 Then David said to Uriah, "Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back." So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. 13 And David invited him, and he ate in his presence and drank, 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.

 Verse 13 says that, “David invited him … so that he made him drunk.”Therefore, it doesn’t appear that Uriah intended to get drunk but that David kept giving him drink, and given Uriah’s position, he would have felt the need to keep drinking it, and thus, he ended up drunk!  Now, David was counting on Uriah not to get passed out drunk, but certainly drunk enough that he could no longer rationalize the need to abstain from sex with his wife.  However, Uriah’s ethical code and commitment to serve Israel, David, and his brothers in combat ran deeper than even what drunkenness could undermine.  Sadly, one commentator noted that at this point in David’s life,

 “Uriah drunk is more pious than David sober.”¹²Hoffner, H. A., Jr. (2015). 1 & 2 Samuel (Vol. 2, p. 421). Lexham Press.

So, what is David going to do now? Uriah’s ethical standards can’t even be manipulated when he’s drunk!  David was standing face to face with the kind of integrity and character he once had but was now hypocritically trying to hide the fact that he no longer had it in hopes of falsely convincing people that he still did.  But sadly, once again, like a broken record playing a tract to a horror film, David is about to run right past this incredible opportunity to repent, except this time, he's about to leap into the unthinkable.  To this, Gordon Keddie wrote,

“An unrepentant attitude weakens the conscience and opens the door to all sorts of self-serving schemes and stratagems that otherwise might never have entered your head. David had a guilty conscience, but he acted against it instead of upon it. He refused to turn to the Lord in sincere repentance. Indeed, so fixed was he upon covering his tracks that he was about to resort to nothing less than the sin of murder!”¹³Keddie, G. J. (1990). Triumph of the King: The Message of 2 Samuel (pp. 102–103). Evangelical Press.

Here’s what happened,

 14 In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. 15 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." 16 And as Joab was besieging the city, he assigned Uriah to the place where he knew there were valiant men. 17 And the men of the city came out and fought with Joab, and some of the servants of David among the people fell. Uriah the Hittite also died. 18 Then Joab sent and told David all the news about the fighting. 19 And he instructed the messenger, "When you have finished telling all the news about the fighting to the king, 20 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? 21 Who killed Abimelech the son of Jerubbesheth? Did not a woman cast an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died at Thebez? Why did you go so near the wall?' then you shall say, 'Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.'"22 So the messenger went and came and told David all that Joab had sent him to tell. 23 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. 24 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." 25 David said to the messenger, "Thus shall you say to Joab, 'Do not let this matter trouble you, for the sword devours now one and now another. Strengthen your attack against the city and overthrow it.' And encourage him."

“Knowing that any news of a skirmish lost would upset the king, possibly reminding him of Abimelech’s fatal mistake under the walls of Thebez in the days of the judges (Judges 9:50–57), Joab ensured that the name of Uriah the Hittite was dropped, almost as an aside. David would ‘get the message’. It would be too bad that so many men were killed, but, after all, such are the fortunes of war!”¹⁴Keddie, G. J. (1990). Triumph of the King: The Message of 2 Samuel (pp. 103–104). Evangelical Press.

It seems that Joab ordered his men into a situation of difficulty for the sheer opportunity it presented to get Uriah killed in battle. He sent them to a section of the wall where Joab knew the Ammonites had valiant men defending them, skilled fighters who would not back down.  In other words, Joab sent men into a battle that he knew they couldn’t win so that when Israelites began to be killed, Joab could then withdraw his forces in a way that Uriah wouldn’t get the message, and thus, all but guarantee his death—and it worked.

26 When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she lamented over her husband. 27 And when the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD.

David has now wrecked two marriages. In what appeared to be nothing more than pride and vengeance, David violated the law when he took his first wife, Michal, back as one of his wives and, in so doing, forced her to divorce the husband who clearly loved her and that she presumably loved as well.  Then, in this chapter, David added to his family wrecking resume the destruction of Bathsheba’s marriage and, to top it off, performed the ultimate act of cowardness by arranging for her husband to be killed in battle so that he could tell everybody Uriah had slept with Bathsheba while he was in Jerusalem and not have to confess that he was, in fact, the child’s father.   In other words, David made arrangements to take another man’s wife, all while making it look like he was a hero for doing it!

As you will see next week, it appears David felt confident that he had successfully protected his reputation and made everything right by marrying Bathsheba.He seems to think all is well, “But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD.”

We are going to press pause in the story for today so that we can talk about what I believe is the most important thing for us to learn from it.  God gave David numerous exit ramps with flashing lights and horns, telling him to take the ramps off the sinful, destructive path he was on.  But, this godly man, who wrote most of the Psalms that inspire our faith still today, blew right past every one of them!  As such, I want you to think about all the opportunities the Lord is giving you with whatever it is that you are refusing to repent from.

Seeing a disturbing amount of people in the church of Corinth running down the same path that David ran on, passing by every loud and obvious opportunity that God was giving them to escape the destruction ahead of them, Paul wrote this,

1 For I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. 5 Nevertheless, with most of them, God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. (1 Corinthians 10:1-5)

 In other words, like those of us who the grace of Christ has saved, the Israelites were saved by God’s grace as well and, like us, were given all kinds of opportunities to thoroughly understand that trusting God and obeying God no matter what are the only things in life that truly make any sense!  But tons of them consistently blew right past those opportunities and chose to live faithless and disobedient lives, which resulted in them all dying in the wilderness!  So, Paul then wrote,

6 Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. 7 Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, "The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play." 8 We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. 9 We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, 10 nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. 11 Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. 12 Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. 13 No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. 14 Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. (1 Corinthians 10:6-13)

 The two key things we need to see here are that those who think they can ignore the conviction of the Holy Spirit and still stand need to know they will fall and fall hard.  Those who feel their history of spiritual victories and experiences have inoculated them from destroying their life in sin are, at that very moment of pride, standing on the brink of disaster.

But second, there’s not a single sin that has ever overtaken you, nor that ever will, that is not common to every man, and therefore, at no point this side of Christ’s return should you ever see or imagine yourself to be exempt from that truth.  You and I are just as capable of the vial and destructive decisions we just read about with David and in the church in Corinth; we are all literally just as capable of the destruction we just saw David intentionally plan, and nobody, including David, would have ever imagined that he was!  So, with every ounce of appeal I can muster, I pray you take today’s challenge as the most critical challenge you could ever receive.

Challenge

What is the area or areas of your life that you keep running past the gracious opportunities of God to repent?

 “Sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.”  So take the exit ramp God is giving you to repent right now.  In hearing or reading this sermon, God is giving you a massively obvious chance, so take the exit ramp and get off the path leading you to a place that will cost you more than you would ever want to pay.

 We will go much deeper into the subject of repentance next week.  But for now, I just want to cut to the chase.  God is literally giving you the opportunity to repent right now!  The very fact that you are hearing this message is God setting off a siren at full volume to tell you to stop going down that road, stop trying to cover it up, fall on your knees before Him, be honest with Him about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, own what you’ve done with the people that your sin, or the covering up of your sin, impacts and influences, and most importantly, stop running toward sin or trying to cover up your past sins and start running toward Jesus instead!!

Take the exit ramp.  Flee sin.  Run to Jesus!

Discussion Questions

• What were the nonmoral circumstances that gave David the opportunity for moral failure?
• When did circumstances cross over to David entertaining sin?
• Identify in your groups all of the possible “exit ramps” where David could have fled sin.
• How did covering up David’s sin make it worse?
• Why is sin like a trap?
• How does this story from David affect you personally?
• What “exit ramps” have you wished you would’ve taken?
• What does it mean to live a life of constant repentance?
• How does God want repentance to be a regular part of our lives?