We call David a man after God’s heart and yet the Bible also show us the story of his sin with Bathsheba. Joyce shares lessons she has learned from this story that can encourage us through our own disappointments.
david was god’s beloved he was called
god’s beloved and we’re going to take a
detailed look
at david’s sin with bathsheba and i
think that
you will understand it
and be more obey amazed at god’s mercy
than maybe ever before
ii samuel 11 verse 1. then it happened
in the spring at the time when kings go
out to battle
that david sent joab and his servants
with him
and all the fighting men of israel and
they destroyed the ammonates
ammonites and besieged rabba
but david remained in jerusalem now
there’s a message just in this
because it was the time when kings go to
battle
but david stayed home
he sent everybody else and he stayed
home do you know something
sometimes you can keep yourself out of
trouble just by being where you ought to
be when you ought to be there
if you ought to be in church on sunday
morning
come on i wonder how many people
fully intended to say i don’t know maybe
come back to this afternoon session and
i don’t know maybe they had one doughnut
too many and got tired in between
and decided to go home
well i don’t know maybe they’ll end up
in some kind of mess this afternoon
take some kind of temptation and if they
were supposed to be here
if they would have been where they were
supposed to be when they were supposed
to be here then they could have missed
that whole thing
it’s important to just be where you
ought to be when you ought to be there
right how many of you ought to be
spending time with god every morning
before you go out the door to go and do
anything else
you have any idea how much trouble it
will save you during the day
if you’re where you ought to be every
morning for a certain period of time i
don’t care if it’s just
five minutes start your day with god
don’t try to start on your own because
if you start on your own you’re not
gonna like the way the rest of it turns
out
our strength is found in god
so one evening verse two david got up
from his couch and was walking on the
flat roof of the king’s palace and from
there he saw a woman
bathing i’ve never taken a bath on the
roof but apparently they did
then i guess it was a cool place to take
a bath i don’t know
and she was beautiful in appearance now
i don’t know maybe david knew
that ladies took baths on roofs
and maybe that’s why he went to take a
walk on the roof
i don’t know but neither have i ever
taken a walk on the roof so
there may be some things going on here
beyond what we recognized now david sent
word and inquired about the woman and
someone said well
is this not bathsheba the daughter of
eliam the wife of uriah
the hittite so there’s no deception here
david knows she’s married he knows that
she belongs to somebody else
he’s not where he should be he wasn’t
out
in battle at the time of the year when
kings go to battle
he stayed home he was on his roof
looking at her roof
i don’t know we’ll just leave that up to
you in the holy spirit
now i found verse 4 to be interesting
david sent
messengers and took her hmm
wonder what that means well
it doesn’t say that it was consensual
says he took her
it doesn’t sound too good to me sounds
to me like an abuse of his power
when she came to him he lay with her and
when she was purified from her
uncleanness so
here they’re living under the the laws
of the day and
apparently in this situation
her as a married woman
having sex with him rendered her unclean
and so she had to
go through the rites of purification
before she went back home
well guess what your sin always finds
you out the woman conceived and sent
word and said i’m pregnant
uh-oh
now i want you to watch the depth
of depravity that david the beloved of
god
falls into in this situation what was
his weakness
lust wasn’t fear
wasn’t anger it was lust
the devil picks on different people in
different ways and let me tell you
something you need to know yourself
and you need to do everything that you
can
to strengthen yourself in areas
where you’re weak come on now
let me tell you if you’re
if you’re a man or a woman and you’re
tempted
in that way you’ve got a lovely family
and
you don’t do anything to mess it up
you’ve made mistakes in the past
you work at a place where there’s a lot
of good-looking men or a lot of
beautiful women
let me tell you something you better go
in with your eyes closed and pray before
you get there
and you don’t do coffee breaks with them
you don’t start telling them about your
troubles at home
you don’t take them donuts in the
morning you run
like crazy
[Applause]
we don’t you know how many people say
how did i get here
how did this happen well a little bit at
a time
such little minute doses of deception
and we make such tiny little compromises
not paying attention to what the holy
spirit is saying each step
along the way and then before you know
it you’re in such a mess
that you end up losing things in your
life that were very precious to you come
on let’s be smarter than what we’ve been
in the past
amen
verse six then david sent one to joab
saying
send me uriah the hittite so david sent
for her husband
and joab sent uriah to david
and when uriah came to him david starts
to make small
talk with him because he’s got a plan
here
he wants to get him back home
to spend a couple of nights with his
wife
where hopefully he would have sex with
her and then
it would appear that she became pregnant
by him
and david would be off the hook so we
see conniving
deception sin on top of sin
on top of sin so when uriah came to him
david said
ask how joab was and how the people were
doing and how’s the war progressing
not that he cared about any of that he
was making small talk
and david said to uriah well go on down
to your house wash your feet spend some
time at home
uriah left the king’s palace and a gift
was sent from the king out after him
here let me give you a present while
you’re at it but uriah
who was obviously a man of integrity a
man of loyalty
a man of character he slept at the
entrance of the king’s palace with all
the servants of his lord and he would
not go down to his house
when they told david well uriah didn’t
go down to his house
david said to uriah have you not just
come from a long journey
why did you not go to your house now we
see the character
of uriah uriah said to david the ark of
israel and judah are staying in huts
temporary shelters and my lord joab and
the servants of my lord are camping in
the open field
should i go to my house to eat and drink
and lie with my wife
by your life and the life of your soul i
will not do this thing
in other words he’s saying my brethren
out there suffering
the ark of god has been captured
god’s name is being profaned i cannot
just go off and enjoy myself
while everybody else is still having
difficulty i won’t do it
verse 12 then david said to uriah we’ll
stay here today as well and tomorrow
i’ll let you leave
so your uriah remained in jerusalem that
day and the next
now david’s not done yet david calls him
to dinner and he ate and drank with him
so that he made uriah drunk
is anybody seeing this
[Music]
this is david who wrote all the psalms
the beloved of god that we all admire
psalm 23 the lord is my shepherd i shall
not want
come on and he ate and drank with him
and he made uriah drunk and in the
evening he went out to lie on his bed
with the servants of his lord and still
would not go down to his house
oh i bet david’s getting nervous
now you know in no way am i demeaning
david he was a great man of god and
you know if you’re tempted to take what
i’m saying wrong you want to write me a
letter about
you know i’m trying to make a practical
point here
that this that this was a a normal man
who became a great man of god but he was
not a perfect man
amen
and apparently he believed that god was
greater than his greatest mistake
i think it takes unbelievable courage
to just absolutely
do something that
you knew not to do you disappointed
yourself so bad
you disappointed other people you hurt
other people
and yet say i will arise and go back to
my father
and he will heal and restore me once
again
what did the prodigal son do he got such
a bad life that he was living with pigs
wasted his father’s whole fortune and
the bible says that he came to himself
i don’t know maybe somebody’s listening
to me right now maybe you’re watching
from your couch or your recliner
i said one time when i was preaching i
said hey you lean back in your recliner
drinking that beer
and we’ve got this testament a young man
that was in his 20s was doing that very
thing
he’d been strung out on drugs for a long
time and he said when you said that it
scared me so bad
he said i sobered up and accepted christ
so yes god would stop an entire
conference like this
just to speak to you
to let you know it’s not too late you
can make a good decision right
now and start undoing the effects of all
those bad decisions that you’ve made in
the past
amen
god is in the business of giving people
hope not condemning them
and here again we’re not making light of
sin we need to be very repentant we need
to be quick to repent
we need to be very sorry for the things
that we’ve done wrong
but jesus is the solution to sin
and it’s not going to help us to stay in
a pit
that we got into when god is offering us
a way to get out everybody else will
condemn you
and put a lid on your pit but jesus is
the only one that will come and lift you
out
so he wrote david wrote a letter to joab
and sent it with uriah he wrote in his
letter
verse 15. put uriah in the front line of
the heaviest fighting
and leave him so that he may be struck
down and die
wow you know i’ve read this story of
david over and over and i
i mean i never slowed down long enough
to really
look at this and to see
how amazing god is
and how merciful he is
and then he went for a whole year and
didn’t even repent
didn’t even repent until
the prophet confronted him
told him a story i won’t get into the
story
and he realized that he was the man in
the story
that was being talked about and all of a
sudden he was confronted
you know sometimes we can sin terribly
and we can get ourselves so conceived
deceived we can get under so many layers
of excuses
come on that we’re not
facing what’s wrong and maybe you just
need to do that today maybe you need to
stop making excuses maybe you need to
stop blaming it on somebody else and you
need to just come face to face with the
ugliness
of what you’ve done but that’s not a bad
thing that’s a good thing
because that’s a place to begin again
[Music]
[Applause]
but you can’t begin again if you’re not
facing the truth about where you’re at
you will know the truth and the truth
will make
you free you climb out of the pit
and you skip the guilt trip
well he went on to become one of the
greatest greatest heroes in the bible
when you think about
david you don’t remember all this stuff
i don’t even like having to stand here
and bring it up because i like
the picture that i have of david besides
this
but this shows me how amazing god is and
hopefully it gives hope to a lot of
people
who have found themselves in a bad
situation
and you believe the lies of the devil
that is too late for you
now there were consequences for his sin
i don’t want to say that there were not
the bible actually says that david was
never without war in his house after
that
so there were definitely consequences
and that’s the thing we need to remember
about sin
sin can always be forgiven
god will always forgive you and you can
always be restored to fellowship with
god
but that doesn’t mean that you can
always
avoid all the consequences
of the wrong things that you’ve done
and to be honest i don’t even know that
we should want to all that much
i think sometimes we need to say you
know what god i’m so grateful that
you’ve forgiven me and i’m grateful that
you love me
and i’m grateful that i can have
fellowship with you and i don’t have to
be guilty
but i don’t think it’s a bad thing that
i’ve got these consequences because
maybe it will help me remember not to do
it again in the future
the bible says in proverbs that if your
servant doesn’t feel the consequences of
his wrongdoing
he’ll just do it again
that’s why you can’t raise children and
never give them a consequence for
anything they do wrong
and expect them to behave just because
you tell them to
i’ll i would always give my kids my word
first but if that didn’t work i would
touch their circumstances
[Applause]
and let me tell you something that’s the
way god is with us he’ll always give us
his word first
he’ll do everything that he possibly can
to get his word to us and to get us to
agree with him
and to do things his way but if we won’t
he loves us enough to touch our
circumstances