When Kings Behold

David is such a great man. We've been walking with him now for several months through this long, beautiful, hard, glorious journey. And he's done so many things brilliantly. In so many ways, he's this paragon of faith. And what an amazing example. But this morning is not David's best text. It's hard, and it's well known. We're going to look at David and Bathsheba this morning. And I try to remind you when we get to a well-known story that those are actually the most difficult to actually hear. Because the moment that we think we know it, we stop actually listening. The moment we assume, "Oh, I know David and Bathsheba," we lose the ability to actually see what is being shown in the text.

So here's what I'm going to do, because we're going to look at two chapters this morning. I'm going to read this first chapter in its entirety. And I want you to just listen to the story maybe like you've never heard it before. So, 2 Samuel chapter 11:

¹In 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. ²It 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. ³And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” ⁴So 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. ⁵And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.” ⁶So David sent word to Joab, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent Uriah to David. ⁷When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab was doing and how the people were doing and how the war was going. ⁸Then 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. ⁹But 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. ¹⁰When 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?” ¹¹Uriah 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.” ¹²Then 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. ¹³And 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. ¹⁴In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. ¹⁵In 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.” ¹⁶And as Joab was besieging the city, he assigned Uriah to the place where he knew there were valiant men. ¹⁷And 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. ¹⁸Then Joab sent and told David all the news about the fighting. ¹⁹And 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?

Who killed Abimelech the son of Jerub-besheth? Whatever that dude's name is. Sometimes you go for it, sometimes you just let it go.

²¹Who 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.’ ” ²²So the messenger went and came and told David all that Joab had sent him to tell. ²³The 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. ²⁴Then 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.” ²⁵David said to the messenger, “Thus shall you say to Joab, ‘Do not let this matter displease you, for the sword devours now one and now another. Strengthen your attack against the city and overthrow it.’ And encourage him.” ²⁶When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she lamented over her husband. ²⁷And 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.

I want you to notice where this chapter starts. It starts with a calendar, with a time frame, in the spring of the year. I almost envision it as a cinematic wide shot that pans out, springtime. Armies begin to marshal. This is when the kings go out to war. But David doesn't go. David sends. That verb send is the thread that runs all the way through this chapter and into the next. [To send — שָׁלַח — šālaḥ — to send, dispatch; to stretch out (the hand) (HALOT)] David doesn't go, he sends. He sends Joab, the captain of his army. He sends his servants. He sends all of Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But then it's almost like the camera pans back in onto one face, David's. It says, "But David remained at Jerusalem." Literally, in the Hebrew it says, "But David was sitting in Jerusalem." [To sit — יָשַׁב — yāšab (here the participle יוֹשֵׁב, yôšēb) — to sit; to remain (at home); to dwell (HALOT)]

Was it pride that made David not go? Was it comfort? Was he just a man in his 50s who figured he'd earned a reprieve? Scholars have argued every which way about this. Some say there's nothing wrong with the king staying back. Others want to see it as weakness or laziness or pride or whatever. I don't think the text tells us.

Here's what the text does tell us, though. A king who sends other people out to fight is a king with a lot of extra time on his hands. And what he does with that time is what truly matters in this story.

It says, "It happened late one afternoon." So, the army's out fighting. Where's David? He's in his palace. In the late afternoon, he gets up off of his couch. David was a napper. It's biblical.

[laughter]

Late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch, he was walking on the roof of the king's house. So, in that ancient culture, this is where you went to cool off, and to find the breeze, and to relax. And David had a palace built for him. Remember, his would have been the tallest house in the city, most likely. He'd be up on the roof having a vantage over the kingdom that he rules over. It's a profound image. The king standing on his roof gazing out over his city. And it says that he saw from the roof a woman bathing. And the woman was very beautiful. This verb, he saw. [To see — רָאָה — rāʾâ — to see with one’s eyes; to look at; to perceive, understand (HALOT)] Everything that follows in this story begins with this glimpse. With this first stolen glance.

But I want to be careful because it's easy to get this wrong in a couple of different ways. First, seeing is not the problem. Seeing in and of itself is not the sin. David wasn't sinning because his eyes worked. And he didn't sin because he noticed she was beautiful. The text says she was, and the text isn't embarrassed by beauty. That's not the problem. Seeing is where it starts. And what he does with it next is where the tragedy comes.

And I want to say something here. The text never tells us that she's trying to be seen. There's a whole tradition of preaching and commentary on this text that wants to turn Bathsheba into a seductress, a temptress. The text doesn't say anything of that kind. It doesn't say she's up on the roof bathing. She's in her own house, in her own courtyard. The text is going to tell us in a couple of verses she's not just taking a bath because she's taking a bath. She's doing it to observe the Torah, to be faithful to God's instruction concerning women during their menstruation and maintaining ritual purity. So, what she's doing when she's bathing is actually directed towards God and faithfulness to what God has asked her. And David, gazing from the roof into her courtyard, sees her. Again, seeing isn't the problem. The first glance isn't the problem. It's the next, and that's verse three.

David sent and inquired about the woman. Some of these conversations got to be so weird, right? Like David grabs, I don't know, a maid, a warrior, a page, somebody. "Hey, I saw this woman." "What were you doing looking at the, what?" Nobody talks back to the king though, right? So, "I saw this woman. Go find out who she is." Who is this woman? And I like this:

³And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?”

This is her full legal identification in the ancient Near East. This tells us everything we need to know about her. Her name is Bathsheba, her father is Eliam, her husband is Uriah. In the way that this is presented to David, it's like building three fences around her. If the answer had stopped at the daughter of Eliam, she might have been fair game. But she wasn't. She was the wife of Uriah. Now David knows who she is and whose she is.

[snorts]

And he knows Uriah. Uriah's name is in the list of David's mighty men, the ones who had been with him since the time in the caves in the wilderness. David has history with Uriah. He's not a stranger. He's one of his own.

And the way that it's framed, this question, it's not a question. "Is this not?" This is the way that somebody talks to a king indirectly but directly telling him she's off limits. David hears it. He hears the warning. He knows exactly who she is. And we get verse four. David sent messengers. And he took her. We've seen that verb took pop up in this narrative over and over and over again. [To take — לָקַח — lāqaḥ — to take, grasp, seize; to take (a wife); to take away (HALOT)] Now we see it so tragically in David. David refused to take the kingdom for himself. He refused to take the crown and the throne. He refused to raise his hand against Saul, the Lord's anointed. He let God give him the kingdom. He wouldn't take it. But now that he is king, what does he do? He sees this woman who is very beautiful and he, knowing full well who she is, he takes.

⁴So 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.

I think the framing of this is the key to understanding this story in its context of the whole narrative of Scripture. He saw her and he took her. It's not the first time we've seen this pattern. It's actually the first pattern revealed in Scripture. Genesis chapter 3, Eve sees, desires, and takes. Genesis chapter 6, the bene elohim [Sons of God — בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים — bĕnê hāʾĕlōhîm — “sons of (the) gods,” alternatively “sons of God” (HALOT, s.v. אֱלֹהִים)], the sons of God, see that the daughters of man are beautiful. They see and they take. We see it over and over and over again. In Joshua chapter 7, Achan sees the treasure that belongs to God and he desires it, so he takes it for himself and judgment comes upon the people. This is a pattern that comes over and over and over again. And now David is right in it. He sees and he takes. See, this isn't just a story about marital infidelity. It's a story about humanity. It's a story about the story. Even David, the giant killer, the man after God's own heart, even David, when he sees and takes, he brings death and judgment. It is the story of sin and how it operates. How it operates in all of us. How it captures and how it corrupts. But more than that, how it spreads. Because the destruction it brings never remains individualized. It always has a corporate consequence.

I want to say this again about Bathsheba. The text doesn't tell us how she felt. It doesn't give us any idea of her intent. It just describes what David does. The king sent for her. Messengers, plural, show up at her door demanding her presence. You say, "Oh, well, she could have done this. She could have done that." That is an exercise in absolutely missing the point of what this text is laying out for us. The king had sent for her. He had the power of life and death over her husband. In an average affair, we can say something like, "Well, it takes two to tango." This is anything but average or usual. All the power is on one side. I think as we get into this, and we'll get to chapter 12, when God holds David to account over this, and He describes Bathsheba's role, there's no indication of guilt or complicit behavior. In fact, God presents her as a lamb taken out of a poor man's arms. So, whatever was in her heart, which the text doesn't tell us, the weight of the text is not on her. David is the subject of the sending. David is the subject of the taking. David is the one that lays with her. All the verbs of action and power are his.

So, now we get Bathsheba speaking for the first and really the only time in this story. The woman conceived, and she sent. Now, she sends and tells David, "I'm pregnant." One message, two words, rocks David's world. I love there's no demand. There's no threat. There's simply a declaration of reality. David, here's the consequences of your choices. I'm pregnant. And David does what all of us tend to do when faced with our consequences. He tries to handle it. He tries to manage it. So David uses what he has, his resources, his ingenuity, whatever he's got, to manage the consequences of his choices.

So he sends again. This is how I'll solve it. I'll send for Uriah. Uriah will come home. He'll sleep with Bathsheba. Everyone will think it's his child. No harm, no foul. I got away with it. It's a nice plan. Except for the character of Uriah. Right?

So he sends. And it's such a tragic story. Uriah shows up and David asks him three questions. How are you, how's Joab doing? How are the people doing? How is the war doing? But the word there for doing is the word shalom. [Peace — שָׁלוֹם — šālôm — completeness, intactness; welfare, prosperity; peace (HALOT)] He's asking about the peace of Joab, the peace of the people, the peace of the battle after he's just stolen the peace of this man, even though this man doesn't know it. And after he talks to him, he says, "Well, why don't you go down to your house and wash your feet. Go and relax a little. Go and rest." He sends him a gift. Right? Go and be with your wife. But Uriah doesn't go home. He sleeps at the palace door with the servants.

And so what we have here is David's plan to control the circumstances around him doesn't go so well. You may have read about that. We've all experienced it, haven't we? We try to control it. To redirect it, to mitigate and manage.

David calls him and he says, "Hey Uriah, why didn't you go home last night?" And Uriah says:

¹Uriah 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.”

Hold on to those three words, they're going to come back in a little bit. Shall I go to my house to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife? Uriah the Hittite, the foreigner whose name means the Lord is my light. [Uriah — אוּרִיָּה — ʾûrîyâ — “my light is Yah” (or “flame of Yah”) (BDB)] This foreigner who has come to covenant faith in Israel, who has served David faithfully. When David says, "Hey, why didn't you go spend a little time with your wife?" He's like, "How could I do that? The ark is out in the field. The men are out in the field. They're out there. How can I go and live it large while they're suffering?" You're like, "Uriah is a good dude. He's just amazing."

So David goes to plan number two. He's like, "Stay another day." And then he invites him to dinner. And then he starts pouring the drinks. That's what I'll do. I'll get him drunk. I'll get him drunk and then he'll go home. But he doesn't go home. And the irony in the story is that Uriah drunk is more pious than David sober. Right?

And this is what happens when we try to manage the consequences of our sin. The harder we try, the worse it gets. I use this illustration a lot because it's just so visceral to me. It's like squeezing Jell-O. Right? The harder you squeeze, the less you actually have in your hand. And that's what he's doing here. He's trying to control. He's trying to squeeze. And then he realizes, "Uriah, I can't control him. I can't get him to go along with my plan." So it goes to plan number three. And this is absolutely horrific.

¹⁴In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah.

What a story. Can you picture it? A man carries his own death sentence. And because of his character, David doesn't have to worry a second about him opening it and reading it. If he won't go and lay with his wife, he's certainly not going to open a private communication. And so he brings his own death sentence.

I picture him handing it over to Joab. And you remember Joab from last Sunday. Joab was outnumbered and outmanned, surrounded, Syrians in the front, Ammonites in the back. And he gives us the one good line in chapter 10. Be of good courage, and let us be courageous for our people. And may the Lord do what seems good to Him. Literally, may the Lord do what is good in His eyes. [In his eyes — עַיִן — ʿayin (here בְּעֵינָיו, bĕʿênāyw) — eye; with the preposition בְּ and the suffix, “in his sight,” i.e., in his judgment or estimation (BDB)] The man who trusted what was good in the eyes of the Lord will now carry out what is good in the eyes of David. And Joab doesn't even pull it off cleanly. He can't pull back and leave one man alone at the wall without it being obvious. So, he sends a whole unit too close to the wall. So, verse 17 says:

¹⁷And 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.

Don't skip past that line. This is part of the heart of this story. We like to think that our sin is private and personal and individualized and nobody else's business. But we're not individualized. We're not private. We are communal, relational creatures made that way on purpose by God. And so there's this reality in this. David's look doesn't just cost Uriah's life. It cost the life of others in his army. It cost so much. That's really what I want you to see out of this series, that what a king beholds becomes what a people bear. The consequences don't just fall on David. They fall on the people that David is leading.

So, the report comes back and David says this to the messenger. I think this is so heartbreaking. Verse 25, David said to the messenger, so he gets the message that a bunch of people have died including Uriah. And he sends another message back to Joab. He says:

²⁵David said to the messenger, “Thus shall you say to Joab, ‘Do not let this matter displease you, for the sword devours now one and now another. Strengthen your attack against the city and overthrow it.’ And encourage him.”

In the Hebrew, it's literally do not let this matter be evil in your eyes. Displease your eyes. [To be evil — רָעַע — rāʿaʿ (here אַל יֵרַע בְּעֵינֶיךָ, ʾal yēraʿ bĕʿênêkā) — to be evil, displeasing (in someone’s eyes) (HALOT)] It's the same phrase, actually, we saw the advisors use with Hanun when they saw the hesed offered by David. Do you see this and think that it means good?

David is telling Joab what to see and how to see it. Joab has just been complicit in the murder of an innocent and from all accounts a good, righteous man. And David, who has instigated this whole thing, says to him, "No, it's okay. You can look at this through the lens of, you know, we all die sometime." Things happen in war. And that's where this process of sin mitigation and sin management and cover-up and controlling goes. It's not just hiding a sin. We redefine it. He's trying to teach the people around him to see it the way that he wants them to see it. If you don't see how that's happening in our culture right now, you're really not paying attention. Instead of facing the sin, owning the sin, dealing with the sin, let's just redefine it as not a sin. Problem solved. Until we get to the last line of the chapter.

^27bBut the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.

First time in 26 verses that God's shown up. Referenced or mentioned at all.

^27bBut the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.

It's the same phrase. Do you see it? David says to Joab, "Don't let this be evil in your eyes." And God says, "It's actually evil in Mine." The whole chapter is about what a king does with his eyes. And then it ends with the only eyes that actually matter. And the next chapter tells us what God does. So it says:

¹And the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. ²The rich man had very many flocks and herds, ³but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him.

Nathan the prophet. David doesn't send anymore. Now David just receives. So, he comes with a riddle, a story. David doesn't know that. David thinks it's an actual event.

I told you to remember those three verbs. They're the exact same. Uriah won't eat and drink and lie with his wife. Nathan is building a parable out of the pieces of David's own sin and David is absolutely blind to it. He says:

⁴Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.” ⁵Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, ⁶and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.”

Oh, the righteous anger of the king. The man who arranged a murder a chapter earlier is now too angry to see straight about a stolen sheep. The law of Moses, Exodus 22, said that a man who stole a sheep must pay it back four times. So David's actually keeping the law, but he adds on to it. He must die. He must die. The law did not require that. David goes past the law. He's furious. And why? I think we actually understand this if we'll get honest with ourselves. He's furious because condemning someone else's sin is one of the surest ways to feel better about your own. I don't have to deal with my sin if I just look and judge yours.

And then Nathan said to David, what a moment this was, "You are the man." In the English it's four words and in the Hebrew it's just two. [The man — אִישׁ — ʾîš (here אַתָּה הָאִישׁ, ʾattâ hāʾîš) — man; the clause has no verb, “you [are] the man” (HALOT, s.v. אִישׁ)] You. Man. You did this. You just put a death sentence on your own head. You're the one that did this.

The man who saw and took from a rooftop has been seen by someone whose eyes are much higher and much sharper.

And then listen to what God says, and here's the thing, because it's probably not what you'd expect. Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel. He engages David in a conversation of reason. He says, I anointed you king over Israel and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul. He starts reminding him of the relationship that he's had with God over the course of his life and how God has always been faithful and how God has always given what He promised and how David in the past had been content and faithful and willing to wait upon the Lord. He says:

^7bThus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul. ⁸And I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more.

So we hear the heart of God, and then this is when you think of the heart of God for you, towards you, is He stingy or generous? Do you got to squeeze stuff out of Him? Do you got to convince Him to want your good? Is He withholding or is He ready and willing to give?

So in this text God is saying, "David, why would you go and take for yourself when I've always been there generously giving to you?" And see, this is the heart of the question. So go back to Adam and Eve in the garden. Why do you got to take the fruit from this tree when I gave you every other fruit? Why? See, behind the gaze, behind the lust, behind the taking, behind the cover-up is a man who has stopped seeing God as He is. The God who has given him everything. So God continues. He says:

⁹Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.

Yeah, you didn't kill him, David, but you killed him. You set it up. And then come the consequences. Because there's always consequences to our choices. He says:

¹⁰Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’

Do you see what God is saying about the root of the problem? Now, God's not saying that the things David did, killing Uriah and taking his wife, aren't bad. They're bad. But the reason that they're bad and underneath the badness of those acts and those choices is that fundamentally, it's an act against God. "You've despised Me," God says. So it says:

¹Thus says the Lord, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. ¹²For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun.’”

For what you did, I will take. The grammar turns around. The taker will be taken from, and it won't stay private. It won't stay in the palace. It will be before all of Israel. This consequence announced to David is exactly what we're going to see as we keep walking through the text. Next week, the sword will come into David's house and it doesn't ever go away. Amnon and Absalom and Adonijah. A king's look from a rooftop and the taking of another man's wife will result in civil war. Untold death. Because what a king beholds becomes what a people become.

David's response, I'll give him credit for this. It's short and to the point. No excuses, no rationalization. David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the Lord." I'm sure Bathsheba is going, "Well, what about me?" Uriah seemed to have been sinned against. You see, David understands that all of those acts flow out of his fundamental understanding of who God is and his responsibility to God. So, he owns it. I have sinned. And Nathan said to David, "The Lord also has put away your sin and you shall not die." But technically, according to the law, David should have died. And according to his own judgment, he called for his own death in his own judgment. But the Lord puts it away.

Depending on your perspective in this story, you might want to look at that and say, "Well, that's unfair." And I think that's good for you to see that. This is a story about unfairness. And in the biblical story, grace is always unfair. He does not treat us as our sins deserve. That is the reality of unfair. I know I've said this many times to y'all before, but the last thing you want God to be with you is fair. That's the last thing you want.

Forgiveness is always unfair, but it doesn't spare us from the consequences. The judgment's still there. Adam and Eve were covered in the garments of skin. They were still cast out of the garden. David's not going to be put to death. God's grace is there. But he's still going to have the sword in his house and the consequences are frankly unimaginable.

Verse 14 to 23. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, your child who is born to you shall die.

¹⁵Then Nathan went to his house. And the Lord afflicted the child that Uriah’s wife bore to David, and he became sick. ¹⁶David therefore sought God on behalf of the child. And David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground. ¹⁷And the elders of his house stood beside him, to raise him from the ground, but he would not, nor did he eat food with them. ¹⁸On the seventh day the child died. And the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they said, “Behold, while the child was yet alive, we spoke to him, and he did not listen to us. How then can we say to him the child is dead? He may do himself some harm.”

But when David saw that his servants were whispering, this is actually the second time that that verb saw happened. So, first he sees Bathsheba. Now he sees the servants whispering. It's a whole bookend. So it says:

¹⁹But when David saw that his servants were whispering together, David understood that the child was dead. And David said to his servants, “Is the child dead?” They said, “He is dead.” ²⁰Then David arose from the earth and washed and anointed himself and changed his clothes. And he went into the house of the Lord and worshiped. He then went to his own house. And when he asked, they set food before him, and he ate. ²¹Then his servants said to him, “What is this thing that you have done? You fasted and wept for the child while he was alive; but when the child died, you arose and ate food.” ²²He said, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept, for I said, ‘Who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me, that the child may live?’ ²³But now he is dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.”

"He's dead." This story, if it doesn't break your heart, you've got a real hard heart. It is so heartbreaking. And that's so heartbreaking because I think it's so real and relevant to every single one of us. David saw, and he took. And the consequence was death. Not his, but the death of so many others, including his own son. The chapter finishes with David marrying Bathsheba, and then Solomon is born, and he defeats the Ammonites and takes Rabbah, and he takes the crown, and he takes the city, and he takes. It goes right back to taking. David never really recovers from this. The end of the chapter, he's just back being an ancient Near Eastern king. Taking and taking and taking and taking. While others pay the price.

I can't help but go to Jesus. And I hope you see it on your own. David points us towards Jesus in so many ways in these stories. Usually it's as the paragon of faith. We see him point towards the coming king, the King of kings. But here we see it in his failure. See, Jesus, the true and greater David, the King of kings, doesn't escape the consequences of death. But instead takes our consequences and our death upon Himself. He dies so that we might live. It's the inverse of what happens in this story of David. David lives and others die. That's how he's king. Jesus dies so that others live. That's how the true King acts. If that doesn't get you excited this morning, I can't do anything else. What a King we have. What a Savior. What a God we serve.

The One who takes our sin and gives us His righteousness. The One who takes our death and gives us His life. He takes our sorrow and gives us His joy. He takes our captivity and gives us His freedom. He takes our darkness and gives us His light.

David in this story points us in his failure to the faithfulness and success of Jesus, who finally breaks the pattern of he saw, he desired, and he took. Jesus never seized what wasn't offered. Jesus never saw and took for Himself what the Father didn't command Him to do. He broke the pattern that allows us to find freedom.

As I was reflecting on this story, I kept coming back to James chapter 1. I think there's three verses here in James that summarize this whole narrative of David and Bathsheba. James writes:

¹³Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. ¹⁴But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. ¹⁵Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

That's the story of David. He was enticed and lured by his desire. What he saw, he desired. What he desired, he took. And when he took it, he brought death. And of course he did, because that's what sin is and that's what sin does. It's not simply the breaking of a rule or stepping outside of a boundary. It's ultimately a violation of the way that God has designed things to be. There is a Creator and He has created things to operate in a certain fashion. And when that fashion is violated, that's what we call sin. And see, it's created to bring about life. And when you violate the order of that creation, what is it going to bring besides death? Right? Of course it does. It's the natural consequence.

God brings order, sin brings chaos. God brings life, sin brings death. God brings unity, sin brings separation. See, this is not just David and Bathsheba's story. It's our story. We see. We want. We take. We violate the order. And we bring death into the world.

See, the good news of the gospel, church, is that this is exactly why Jesus came. He came to break this pattern, this cycle. He came to set us free from the power of sin and death. Let me close with just some of the most beautiful words penned by the beloved disciple, John. First John chapter 2, verse 1, says this:

¹My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

Some of you need to hear that this morning. That's actually our goal. That's the direction we're supposed to be aiming at. That's what we're supposed to be looking at and looking for. We're not supposed to operate under the power of sin. It's been broken in us. We're actually called now to live as slaves to righteousness, not slaves to sin. He says, "I'm writing these things to encourage you, to strengthen you, to teach you, to guide you so that you could actually live your life according to the way that God designed you to live and not violate it anymore." Some of us have gotten so comfortable with sin. We go, "Oh, that's just how it is. I'm a sinner. I sin." And yes, you are. And yes, you will. And yet he says, "I'm writing these things so that you don't." So that you don't.

But this is what I love about John, because then he says this, "But if anyone does," which is really when you do. When you violate the way things are supposed to go. When you see and you desire and you take. When you birth death in yourself and in others. We have an advocate with the Father. We have an advocate. We have One who didn't see and take. We have One who didn't escape the consequences of His own sin, because He didn't have them, but instead took the consequences of everyone else's sin upon Himself so that we might have life. He didn't bring death into the world. He defeated it.

So when we sin we have an advocate. We got One who stands in our place. One who speaks for us. One who defends us. We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus, the King. Your advocate's not some guy that barely passed the bar. The only job he could get was working for the state, and he doesn't, do you know what I'm saying? But you got the Advocate. You got the King on your side calling out for you. He's Jesus, the King, the righteous.

²He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

There ain't no king like Jesus. So, church, I don't mind being redundant. I don't mind being repetitive over something as central and as important as this. Fix your eyes on Jesus, the King. He is the author and perfecter of your faith. He is the One who always keeps His promises. And He is the One who will establish us and give us life. Look to Jesus. Grow in grace. Become what you behold. Amen? Amen.