There's more to the man than his sin. I try to tell most folks when they have really goofed up in counseling. I would say to them, you know, there's more to you than this. If we're going to go forward, if you're going to survive this, because you can survive it and be bitter towards God, or just useless after that, or going forward, you can make this thing work better than it would if you just gave up. There's more to you than the sin.
And this is the case with David, and that's why I'm bringing these things up. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the Book of Second Samuel. Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching.
Second Samuel chapter eleven is the text Pastor Rick will be teaching from on this edition of Cross Reference Radio. Verse eight: David said to Uriah, "Go down to your house, wash your feet." So Uriah departed from the king's house. And a gift of food from the king followed him.
Well, Uriah is being told, "Wash your feet" is belongs to a euphemism, an idiom within the Hebrews. In other words, before you go to bed, you wash your feet. I want you to go home and sleep with your wife, and though he can cover up the pregnancy and say the child is Uriah's. Be a problem if Uriah is not redheaded, and the child comes out with red hair. Right?
Those questions, because we know David had red hair. That you know we do. This mildly humorous, but most of the harems, and for instance, in Turkey, the overseers of the harems were Africans of dark skin, and that was one of the reasons why they did that. Anyhow, you know, suspicion would be aroused, and you'd have big problems from those sultans. David is underestimating the character of Uriah, and Uriah is overestimating the character of David.
It's messed up in life. I don't like that, but this is a fact.
So David sends a candlelight dinner or fruit basket. At least he sends a dinner. But this is the awkward part. Bathsheba gets the candlelight dinner for two, and she's home alone. That's her first hint that David's trying to fix this, and it's not working because Uriah does not come home.
He stays at base housing or in the barracks, I should say. But Uriah, verse nine, slept on the door of the king's house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house. He doesn't sleep at the doorway. David would trip over them when he got up in the middle of the night to get that glass of milk. But it's base housing.
He's there at the palace, the palace guard. He doesn't go home. Verse ten.
So when they told David, saying Uriah did not go down to his house, interesting how they others are involved in the cover up. They know when they escorted Bathsheba and they knew this was wrong, but he's the king and they're going to be loyal to him. David said to Uriah, verse ten, Did you come from a journey? Why did you not go down to your house? You came all this way.
Why not? Any sane man would want to see his wife. It would be almost comical if it weren't so sin-filled and sin-involved. Anyway, some suggest that David was actually looking for the lesser of two evils. And as this progresses, I'd rather kill Uriah.
Than have Bathsheba stoned to death. That is the condition he created. The two of them created together. The sins we do, two by two, we answer for one by one. And he was going to have Uriah die a hero on the battlefield.
Is how it turns out to be. And may we never find ourselves in such a position. Verse eleven. And Uriah said to David. The ark and Israel and Judah are dwelling in tents, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are encamped in the open fields.
Shall I then go to my house and eat and drink and to lie with my wife, as you live, and as your soul lives? I will not do this thing. Uriah's devotion will get him killed. What? It's a man of God going to be killed by a man of God.
Sin is ruthless. This God is saying, "No jokes. This is serious business." How? What are you going to do, Christian, when faced with such things in life? The name Uriah means Yahweh is light, and in those days, light came from the sun or from fire, the flame.
Yahweh is the flame, and he is certainly devoted to God. And when he says. And Uriah said to David, "The ark of Israel and Judah are dwelling in tents." That had to especially sting David, because you know where is God on Uriah's behalf? That's a whole question we're going to get into, because there are solid answers. I'm not sure I'll have time to get into that.
Of why doesn't God rescue Uriah? What if it were me? I'm a godly man. I'm serving a godly man, and he's going to put a hit on me. And why doesn't God do more and protect my marriage?
And we'll come to that at some point. But anyway, back to this: we have to remind ourselves.
Well, I guess maybe this is the answer to remember: God is not exhausted by death. Death is really not death to God. Uriah will count this a small thing when he gets to eternity. I'm getting again ahead of myself, but think of this: David, Bathsheba, and Uriah share the same heaven at this very moment, and they've been sharing it for thousands of years. Do you think they're up there with a grudge?
Of course not.
So we have to retain that when we go through these spots that God has a divine and eternal perspective. And we don't share all of that, nor should we, because we might be ending our lives to hurry up and get to heaven, which would be a sin and wrong on many tiers. But the ark in Israel and Judah are dwelling in tents. He says David had to cringe at these words because they were his words to the prophet Nathan. I'm dwelling in this palace of cedar, and the ark of the covenant is in a tent.
Uriah learned, as so many of them learned. We talked about Abishai. All these guys, he learned so much from David about God. And here is Uriah saying, "I can't do this." The Ark of the Covenant was likely taken with them to the battlefield. It could have been in Jerusalem, but.
Was likely taken with them to the siege. Is really not that important. What is important is that it was under a tent, and he was identifying that his duty was on the battlefield, as the Ark of the Covenant had its duty given to the people by God. And this haunted David that he was up to no good. It haunted him throughout the year of broken communion.
Psalm thirty-two, which he wrote after the old ordeal was. Finalized. When I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groanings all day long.
So this bugged him. He was not casual about this. The thought that he was going to take out Uriah, he hated it. But he felt this was the lesser of two evils, and he put up a fight as always. But he could not reverse the deed.
It was what it was. It was too late for that now. And he says, "And my Lord Joab and the servants of the Lord are encamped in the open fields." Which is another shot at David. The king should have been there. Uriah should have been saying something like that about David.
Shall I then go to the house and eat, drink, and lie with my wife? What was David going to say? Yeah, of course he could not say it to such a caliber of man as Uriah. Maybe Uriah felt he was being tested. Is David testing me?
Why is he asking? Why is he doing this? Seems a little precise. He had to pick up on some of it. He couldn't have been just like that dense.
Maybe he was. Anyway, he says, "As your soul lives, I will not do this thing." He slammed the door shut on pleasure first. What does David do?
Well, he makes plans to cover up this sin. He takes it to the next stage. His guilt is compounded by his betrayal of a loyal man, of a man that will not betray others. David, the king, and he knows it's eating him alive that he's doing this. But yet, the scent of sin—he's caught it.
And again, I feel strongly that he likely fell in love with Bathsheba, and he's going to protect her no matter what from the stoning. The law would call for both of them to be stoned. Nobody's going to stone the king. Saul killed the priest. Nobody lifted a finger.
He's pretty much safe. She is the one that would suffer the most. Verse twelve. Then David said to Uriah, "Wait here today also, and tomorrow I will let you depart." So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. This is a slow motion train wreck.
That's what we're watching. Verse. Thirteen.
Now David called him and ate and drank before him, and he made him drunk. And at evening he went out to lie on his bed with the servants of his lord, but he did not go to his house.
So he tried getting him drunk. Maybe that would work. Intoxicating substances. That you know they are thieves. They enter the body and they attack the brains.
I didn't say the brain singular, though. That does that to the brains, the person's ability to reason. But it doesn't mess up Uriah. David is trapped. He's trapped by the integrity of a man that is interfering with his nefarious cover up.
You know, I will take this verse. We have time. This going back to God not protecting Uriah. In Kings, there was Jeroboam the king. It was a creepy king, and he had a child.
The child got sick, and he sent the wife to the prophet to find out if the child would live or not. And God makes an interesting statement that is very revealing about God's perspective on life and death. And all Israel shall mourn for him," said the prophet to the mother. For he is the only one of Jeroboam who shall come to the grave, because in him there is found something good toward Yahweh God of Israel in the house of Jeroboam. He says he's going to die because he's better than all of you.
Wow, is that not insightful to how God approaches things from time to time with us? This is not that Uriah was a bad man. It tells me that God is not overly impressed with our staying alive in this life, since He brings the righteous to a far better place.
Well, even Uzzah went to a far better place. The children, the innocents of Bethlehem, from God's perspective, it was a blessing because they were in heaven. Antipas, my faithful servant, my faithful martyr. From God's perspective, it was a promotion. We can't lose sight of that, and yet we have to balance that with, we are here until God calls us home.
Verse fourteen. In the morning, it happened that David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. Deeper into sin, he sends orders by the victim's own hands, his own death warrant. Take this note to kill you, to Joab. An honorable man being slain by another honorable man, except for this verse fifteen, and he wrote in the letter saying, "Set Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle and retreat from him, that he may be struck down and die." There it is.
He's telling Joab to pull the trigger. The deed is done, and. Joab reads this, of course, and so did somebody else. Find out about this at some point. Maybe David, you know, came clean.
And details as time will moved on. But verse sixteen continues the story.
So it was while Joab besieges the city that he assigned Uriah to a place where he knew there were valiant men. He's sending them on a suicide mission. Joab knows.
Okay, here's where their elite troops are, and that's what he's going to. Attack, and David knew Joab would act without hesitation, without question. David was desperate at this point to hide his sin, and in those days Joab was loyal to a fault. For David, Joab and death often roomed together, and whenever Joab comes around, somebody's going to die, and he's going to be part of it in some way. I mean, it comes a time where you know he besieges the city, and the old lady says, "What do you got to do to get us out of this?" And he says, "You know, give us so and so." And she says, "All right." And he threw his head over the wall.
A little later, Joab said, "Oh shucks, man! I was hoping to wipe out the city." No, he didn't say that, but it wouldn't be a surprise if he did. Verse seventeen. Then the men of the city came out and fought with Joab, and some of the people of the servants of David fell, and Uriah the Hittite died also.
So very tragic. I could weep for David and the deaths that it caused. I mean, this is my hero. He is still my hero because God does not just disqualify him. Because being the hero that he is, he does repent.
When they were going out on this mission, knowing how troops are, they had to be saying, "This is the stupidest assignment. We're going to get killed." He's sending us into the mouth of the dragon. They knew attacking the wall like this was a death sentence, but their loyal troops. They're going to do it, and you really, you know, it comes down to a ground assault.
Somebody's got to be first, and David's motives did not make Uriah less the hero that he was because David was up to no good. Uriah is still a hero. It is as though God is showing us how evil the best of His servants can be. And how forgiving he can be, how forgiving God can be of His servants, and that is part of the fact. We need to see that as servants.
We read the story about David, and we take care. Manasseh is far worse than David, and creates total mayhem in Israel and Judah, and yet he repents in the end. Verse eighteen. Then Joab sent and told David all the things concerning the war. Joab and accomplice in the crime, blind loyalty.
Verse nineteen, and charge the messenger saying, "When you have finished telling the matters of the war to the king, verse twenty, if it happens that the king king's wrath rises, and he says to you, 'Why did you approach so near the city when you fought? Did you not know that they would shoot from the wall?'" Verse twenty one. Who struck Abimelech, the son of Jerubbaal? Was it not a woman cast a piece of a millstone on him from the wall, so that he died in Thebes? Why did you go near the wall?
Then you shall say, "Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also." So Joab is anticipating David's displeasure with his tactics because they both know come from the same military school of warfare. Of you know, city besieging. Joab is covering himself. He says, "Listen, we both David and I know the manual on this, the protocol to attack a city, the tactic. This ain't the right one." And he might become pretty upset when he finds out that I employed this tactic because Joab's orders was to attack the city and then pull back and leave Uriah there.
And Joab says, "But you know that's too obvious. I mean, everybody's going to see that. As you know, hey, Uriah, you stay and everybody else come back." So Joab says, "How am I going to do this?" And I know we'll just attack the wrong wall and I'll put him up front and those arrows, the archers will get him because it's a dumb move. Verse twenty, and I guess if the archers did not get him, Joab would have said, "I'll get him; be my pleasure." Verse twenty-two.
So the messengers went and came and told David all that Joab had sent by him. And remember, Joab is covering himself and giving these instructions. Verse twenty-three. And the messenger said to David, "Surely the men prevailed against us." Verse twenty-three, and came out to us in the field. Then we drove them back as far as the entrance of the gate.
Verse twenty-four. The archers shot from the wall at your servants, and some of the king's servants are dead. And your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.
So he doesn't do it Joab's way. He says, "I am going to tell the story right out. I am not giving the king a chance to yell at me. I don't want to see him. You know, I am just going to tell him Uriah is dead, and David." He just, you know, pretty much.
Well, this is war, as he pretends to be ignorant of the whole thing. But the dreadful knoll of self-loathing is going on on the inside. Is no question about that. The wages of sin are death, and there it is. The first.
Few casualties because Uriah did not die alone. Verse twenty four: Some of the king's servants are dead, all because of David. Verse twenty five: Then David said to the messenger, "Thus you shall say to Joab: Do not let this thing displease you, for the sword, the bowers one as well as another, strengthen your attack against the city, and overthrow it.
So encourage him. The masquerade." Using fluffy military talk, such as war, it happens. Joab, now get back in there and win. Verse twenty-six. Joab's not fooled by any of that.
When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah, her husband, was dead, she mourned for her husband. She probably did love him. I mean, just doesn't instantly mean because she was unfaithful in that way. I know that's hard for us. Maybe harder for some than others.
To understand, anyway, there is a pathetic repetition taking place in this chapter. There's two of them, and the name of David is 23 times shows up in this chapter, not counting pronouns, just the name. Uriah, his name shows up 21 times in 27 verses. It is, it's supposed to be eerie like that. There is no indication that she was aware that David had done this.
At this point, she'll learn later, and I guess she accepts it. She figures it out. He saved my life, and I caused the death of my husband. Verse twenty-seven. And when her 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 Yahweh. A customary seven days, perhaps more, of the mourning period. She becomes his wife. David had done this with Abigail when she became a widow, not by the hand of David. And so David's looking like a pretty compassionate man.
You know, he takes widows in. He takes care of the widows.
Well, not really.
So on the surface, it was similar, but beneath the surface, is nothing in common. Bore him a son.
So we're now about almost a year away from the event. But the thing that David had done displeased Yahweh, and there again, the dramatic music would play at this point. The historian could not omit this. It's just not in him, and rightfully so. The scriptures are anointed by God, the Spirit of God, writing through these characters, these human beings, these believers, and it is, of course, indicating to us that the story is not over.
That God is going to deal with this. Here we have this accomplished king. Going back to being a faithful shepherd boy, faithful to his parents. You know when he shows up at the battlefield, well, almost battlefield, when Goliath would come out, he's still a faithful lad, and we talked about how reliable he was. He left the sheep in someone else's care.
He does what his father tells him to do. He's intolerant of blasphemy, and he slays the giant. And then he walks around with the head. He takes it to Jerusalem and says, pretty much, you know, this is Moriah. This belongs to us.
His military exploits. Twice sparing the life of Saul when he could have killed him and would have been justified, the writing of Psalms, the rescue of Kiela, taking Zion, bringing the Ark to Jerusalem, dancing before it with all his might. God doesn't just sweep that off the way and say, "Yeah, but you sinned and that's that." This is David too. There's more to the man than his sin. I try to tell most folks when they have really goofed up in counseling.
I would say to them, you know, there's more to you than this. If we're going to go forward, if you're going to survive this, because you can survive it, and be bitter towards God, or just useless after that, or going forward, you can make this thing work better than it would if you just gave up. There's more to you than the sin. And this is the case with David, and that's why I'm bringing these things up. And when pastors are in this arena of restoring the sinner, and that's what it is, because what makes it an arena, what makes it a place of confrontation, is other Christians, other Christians judging the grace.
Well, I think he should have been, and I think, and I just sometimes, you know. Certainly, pastors can goof, make a mistake in their call. That comes with the territory, but hopefully not as a pattern. But over the years, I know of times when you see, you know, God forgives of this, and we just got to go forward.
Now, I'll go forward with you if you're willing to own up to it. And then, hearing, you know, from other people, so and so was really upset with that. They think they should have been kicked out of the church, something like. And sometimes they do need to be defrocked. It's just you know what you did—the sin under our nose—and just gonna work here.
You're gonna have to find another place to worship. But another place to worship, you should find. It's not like you're banished from church for the rest of your life, you filthy, no good, miserable sinner. Boy, that would be hell. And yet, there's some that just don't see it anyway.
David and Uriah, two righteous men. Satan got hold of the situation, and to understand the powers of forgiveness, I close with this verse. This is Jesus speaking. He says, "Therefore, I say to you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven. The thief on the cross.
How many families did he mess up? How many things did he steal? How much harm did he do?" And yet, today you will be with me in paradise. Would not somebody say, "I object"? For she loved much, Jesus said about her.
For she loved much, but to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little. That means when he says little is forgiven, they're not mindful of how much they've been forgiven, because forgiven people. When God forgives, He's forgiven much every single time. And if you don't see that, then you're the one that has been forgiven little. It's on you.
And so we'll continue with this story into the next chapter when the man of God Nathan comes forward and more lessons for us. This has been the latest edition of Cross Reference Radio. Pastor Rick Gaston is teaching through the Book of Second Samuel, which details the reign of David as king of Israel. There are so many life lessons to be learned during these years of David's life. We're glad you've tuned in to hear more from God's Word.
This radio ministry comes to you from Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Mechanicsville, Virginia. If you're interested in Accessing more messages, just like this one, you can listen online or download these messages at CrossReferenceRadio dot com. You can also subscribe to our podcast by going to your favorite podcast app. We can't wait for you to step into the next teaching that Pastor Rick has for us.
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