Overview of 2 Samuel, Adult Discipleship Class

We’re going to continue our study in the Old Testament today, but before we do, as Pastor Ron always says, let’s go before the throne of grace. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, we come before you today in gratitude for the gospel, for the ways that you’ve worked in our lives and drawing us to yourself and redeeming us, causing us to be born again, sanctifying us as we even talked about today, recognizing that our sanctification is not ultimately dependent upon ourselves, but upon you.

We think about how things written in the past were written for our instruction. The Old Testament scriptures are meant to give us principles of wisdom as to how we might honor you with our lives. Certainly, Lord, our text today, 2 Samuel, has plenty of principles applicable to our lives.

And even thinking about the hymn song as well, that our hearts are prone to wander, Lord. And we pray that by your grace that you would protect our hearts, that you being the one that is able to keep us from stumbling, would grant us the grace to continue to repent of our sin and turn to Christ, to grow in love with him, and in recognition of the evil of our sin, also see how great your love is. We love you, we praise you, and we ask that you bless this study today. It’s in your name we pray these things, amen.

So please turn with me to the book of 2 Samuel. 2 Samuel, that will be our text today. Hopefully we’ll get through the whole book, no promises. I was intending with my Old Testament class to get through all of Ezekiel last week and only made it through 11 chapters.

And we continue today our biblical theological study of the Old Testament. And now when I use that term biblical theological, I probably should explain myself a little bit. When we think of the study of theology, usually today you will hear of two different kinds of studying of theology, maybe three if you count historical theology. There are some that spend more time in the biblical theological study and some who spend more time in the systematic theological study. I think both of them should be kind of merged together as they historically have been and biblically speaking I believe they are as well.

But some people think today that we should just focus on biblical theology. That is, we should only focus on the individual study of specific authors, of specific books, and trying to trace a sort of progressive view of Revelation. Now, when I use the word progressive, I don’t mean it in the sense of those people protesting off Dracon College all the time, right? I mean in the sense of development, right?

The idea that each book sort of fills in the puzzle that’s already been laid out, giving us a more vivid picture of who God is in our studies of theology. The problem with only having biblical theology is that we assume that we kind of come to the text with a blank slate.

Our goal is not to come to the text with a blank slate, because no one does. No one’s neutral when we come to the text of Scripture. All of us have certain affinities towards the truth within, just as no one is neutral when it comes to the existence of God. And so we need to recognize that when we study theology biblically, or biblical theology, tracing individual books and individual authors, we are studying it with systematic theology as well. The opposite extreme is only systematic theology.

That is, only studying the Bible as a whole and not focusing on individual authors and individual books. So often, if we only make that our goal of study, we might take things out of context, citing proof texts that actually don’t follow the authorial intent, the actual meaning of the text. And instead, we can end up sort of creating doctrines of our own making rather than trying to follow what the Bible is teaching.

And you see, this sort of division, if you read books about biblical interpretation and as you’re studying, maybe some commentaries, if you’re studying a specific book, they will often try and separate these two things of biblical theology and systematic theology. These two were separated because a while ago in the 1700s, in the academy, if you will, the people that studied the Bible academically, there arose a movement called higher criticism of the Bible. which essentially was people that assumed the Bible was not without error. They went to the text assuming that there were errors in the scripture, and as a result, they changed their study methods. They sort of forsook systematic theology to only look at it individually with different authors and different books, because their assumption was that there were contradictions in the text.

Maybe one author means something else than another author. Maybe theologies are conflicting. Some saw that Paul and James, rather than fighting two different issues back to back, were fighting against each other. Or the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, were fighting the post-exilic Old Testament books.

This mindset has come even into our day so that we see in the academy or people studying in seminaries, oftentimes they don’t study systematic theology as much. That is a study of the text as a whole. but only focus on a biblical theological study. My point with all of that explanation is that we’re doing both. We’re studying the Bible individually with individual authors and individual books, but we’re not fooling ourselves in thinking we’re not bringing theology to the text, because all of us do. And rather than trying to have a blank slate coming to the text, our goal should be to change those assumptions that we bring to the text according to what is written and revealed in Scripture.

So, without further ado, we have the book of 2 Samuel. Now, 2 Samuel is incredibly important for our understanding of Old Testament theology. I mean, when we think about the foundational nature of certain books of the Old Testament, one that comes to mind certainly is Genesis. We spent two different sessions on Genesis alone. In my Olive Tree class, we are already through Isaiah, and we spent two different classes in that book as well, because both Genesis and Isaiah are so foundational for our understanding, not only of the Old Testament, but also the New Testament as well. And I believe 2 Samuel should be in that category, being a foundational book in order to understand God’s promises moving forward in the prophets that are to come, as well as the New Testament, their descriptions of who Christ is.

It all comes back to the book of 2 Samuel. And it kind of goes along with the theme of the book. If we were to think of a theme of this whole book, it would be the God who blesses David. If there’s a theme for the book of 2 Samuel, it is the God who blesses David because of the Davidic covenant.

Now, a covenant is a treaty between two different parties, right? The ones we have been studying have been between God and man, specifically, throughout the Old Testament. Some would kind of hold the position that there was first covenant was with Adam and Eden. I don’t, not really buying that from the text, but they do have some interesting arguments. After, later in the book of Genesis, we saw the really the first one of our, at least that the text puts forth, of the Noahic covenant. which is that God promised that he would not flood the earth again worldwide as part of his judgment.

And then we get to Genesis chapter 12 with one of the most foundational covenants of them all. Arguably, perhaps the most foundational when it comes to Old Testament treaties in line with the other ones that would just develop this specific covenant, and that is the Abrahamic covenant. Now, there are three components to this covenant, and you know what time it is, ladies and gentlemen. Three components. What are they? Land, seed, blessing. Thank you. Yes, land, seed, and blessing.

God promised Abram, then Abraham later, that he would give his descendants a land, that he would also provide them with many descendants or seed. and that he would also bless them. The blessing has many facets to it. Blessing to Abraham individually and Isaac and Jacob as these promise this Abrahamic covenant is reaffirmed with Isaac and Jacob. They were individually blessed as we saw in the text. We also see blessing in the sense of the nations that bless Abraham’s descendants are blessed, and the ones that curse Abraham’s descendants, that is Israel, are cursed. But also that in Abraham or Abram, that’s all the families of the earth would be blessed.

This is really important and really bleeds into Israel’s role later on as a kingdom of priests and holy nation that they, seeking to worship the Holy God, would end up testifying to the unbelieving world of the true God. That the gods that they worshipped were false. They were created in the image of man. They could not see, they could not hear, they could not help them because they were powerless. Instead, Israel worshipped the Holy God, the one who created everything, is sovereign over all.

We think of the Mosaic Covenant as well. After Israel, right, after we have Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jacob has all his sons, all his descendants, they end up in Egypt because of the Joseph narrative. They end up in slavery and God multiplies their population, raises up Moses, delivers them through plagues across the Red Sea and end up at Sinai.

God gives them a specific covenant, and we see the stipulations of this covenant in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 27 and 28, that Israel would be, for obedience they would be what? Blessed, and for disobedience they would be what? Cursed, good. They would be blessed for obedience, cursed for disobedience. And as we continue in our study of the Old Testament, perhaps the other most foundational covenant of all in the Old Testament is that of the Davidic covenant, which we will see in chapter seven.

Now, once again, by way of reminder, 2 Samuel is just picking up where 1 Samuel left off, right? 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel were originally not divided into two different books. They were both originally one book in the Hebrew text. And because of the Septuagint’s long translation, it was very convenient to separate Samuel into 1st and 2nd Samuel. We saw two weeks ago, and the week before as well, that there are three characters of focus in 1 Samuel.

At the end of the time of the judges, we see the introduction of the first of these characters is Samuel, right? Samuel is born as the last of the judges and also from the priestly line and exercises his role as a prophet in delivering God’s word to the people. The people ask Samuel for a king, not for good intentions, but for bad ones, to be like the rest of the nations, rather than a kingdom of priests and holy nation.

And Samuel, God tells Samuel to anoint Saul as king. Saul becomes the second character of focus in the book of 1 Samuel. And Saul, you know, he’s the attractive candidate. According to human perspective, he externally looks like if anyone’s gonna make a great king, it’s this guy, this Saul. And as we see in the narrative itself in 1 Samuel, Saul sort of starts out okay, but then there’s a downward spiral that even though man looks on the outer appearance, God looks at the heart, God rejects Saul as king because Saul disobeyed God on multiple occasions. And in the narrative itself, we start to see as Saul is spiraling out of control downward, we see that David is sort of being raised upward.

God has Samuel anoint David as the next king. And then the rest of 1 Samuel is really concerned about David and sort of the conflict between him and Saul. Eventually, at the end of 1 Samuel, we saw that Saul and Jonathan were killed, that Saul fell on his own sword, and we sort of ended on a tragic note. And that’s exactly where 2 Samuel picks up. If we were to divide the book of 2 Samuel, It’s all about David.

Remember, it started off in 1 Samuel with Samuel, then Saul. We’re in a section about David. It continues telling many details about David’s reign. The first section is chapters 1 through 10, which describe David’s triumphs. Second section, chapters 11 through 12, describe his transgressions. And the third section, chapters 13 through 24, describe his troubles. Got to love the plural noun proposition, right, Pastor Ron? I’m just kidding. It’s like these divisions aren’t completely perfect, but they kind of help us remember what exactly is going on in the text.

So what we see here at the beginning of the section of David’s triumphs in chapter one is that David learns about Saul’s death as king. We read in verse one, it says, now it came about after the death of Saul, when David had returned from the slaughter of the Amalekites, that David remained two days in Ziklag. On the third day, behold, a man came out of the camp from Saul with his clothes torn and dust on his head.

And it came about when he came to David that he fell to the ground and prostrated himself. And David said to him, from where do you come? And he said to him, I have escaped from the camp of Israel. David said to him, how did things go? Please tell me. And he said, the people have fled from the battle, and also many of the people have fallen and are dead. And Saul and Jonathan, his son, are dead also. And David eventually asks in verse five, how do you know that Saul and his son, Jonathan, are dead? The young man, verse six, who told him, said, by chance, I happen to be on Mount Gilboa. And behold, Saul was leaning on his spear.

And behold, the chariots and the horsemen pursued him closely. When he looked behind him, he saw me and called to me. And I said, here I am. He said to me, who are you? And I answered him, I am in Amalekite. Then he said to me, please stand beside me and kill me, for agony has seized me because my life still lingers in me. So I stood beside him and killed him.” Pause real quick.

Turn back to 1 Samuel 31.4. 1 Samuel 31.4, Saul speaks to his armor bearer. He had been badly wounded. by archers, verse 3 says, and his armor bearer would not kill him. And so the end of verse 4 says, so Saul took his sword and fell on it. Saul took his own life. It wasn’t this Amalekite. This Amalekite was lying. Well, why lie? I think the Amalekite was lying because he thought it was sort of a political favor for David.

We see in verse 10, He said, so I stood beside him and killed him because I knew that he could not live after he had fallen. And I took the crown, which was on his head and the bracelet, which was on his arm. And I have brought them here to my Lord. In other words, David, this Saul guy, I know he was, he was sort of sought your life and it was inconvenient for your reign, David. And so look at what I did for you. And how does David respond? Oh, bravo, bravo, bravo. Thank you.

No. David in verse 14 says, how is it you are not afraid to stretch out your hand to destroy the Lord’s anointed? Remember, David would not kill Saul. In 1 Samuel, he had multiple opportunities, but he would not because Saul was the Lord’s anointed. Not in sort of the threatening televangelist way, but instead in a way that God himself had chosen Saul as king and David respected God’s choice. Since God had chosen Saul as king and God had called for Samuel to anoint Saul as king, David also recognized that God would be the one to get rid of Saul as king. He wouldn’t take things into his own hands because he so revered God’s choice and God’s holiness.

And so David ended up saying to him, verse 16, your blood is on your head for your mouth has testified against you saying, I have killed the Lord’s anointed. David goes on after learning this news, sort of a dirge or a funeral song for Saul and Jonathan. We see this in verses 17 through 27, sort of the recurring theme in verses 19, verses 25 and 27 is how have the mighty fallen And he even speaks of Saul in verse 23 as Beloved he says Saul and Jonathan beloved and pleasant in their life and in their death. They were not parted They were swifter than eagles. They were stronger than lions Imagine David has been pursued by Saul again and again Saul has tried to kill David and yet David is is distraught over the death of Saul.

I think this points to David’s reverence, like I said, for God’s holiness, and certainly, too, for his friendship for Jonathan. Verse 26, he says, I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan. You’ve been very pleasant to me. Your love was, to me, more wonderful than the love of women. Rather than being a natural relational love, this love was a sacrificial love that costed Jonathan everything. Jonathan was the heir to Saul’s throne, and Jonathan had chosen to be on David’s side because he knew the Lord had blessed David, and he would be David’s number one cheerleader. Jonathan’s sort of an unsung hero of the Old Testament.

And so we see that in chapter two, David is now going to be made king over Judah. Remember, what tribe is David from? Judah, right? So we see that Judah at least recognizes his kingship, And he wants to go to Hebron. Now, later we’ll see that eventually he establishes Jerusalem as the capital of his kingdom. And the reason that he would move from Hebron to Jerusalem is because Hebron was further south and more susceptible to attack rather than Jerusalem being surrounded by more land, more fortified. So verse two said, David went up there and his two wives also. Real quick. Deuteronomy, God lays out certain stipulations for future kings. One, they were not to multiply horses for themselves. They were not to multiply gold for themselves. But what was the third one? They were not to multiply wives for themselves. So we see here, David is no perfect individual. We see that there is sin in his life, and this will help inform our understanding of his sin with Bathsheba. So we see verse four, it says, the men of Judah came, and there anointed David king over the house of Judah. And David, he wants the rest of the tribes to recognize him as king as well. But the rest of the tribes recognized a man by the name of Ish-bosheth, son of Saul, recognized by Abner, verse 8 says, a commander of Saul’s army. Now, why was Ish-bosheth recognized and not David?

Perhaps it was sort of a tribal competition, people wanting to keep the kingly line in the tribe of Benjamin. But as we already know from the promise made to Judah by Jacob on his deathbed in Genesis 49 10, which tribe will the scepter not depart from? Judah, right? So they should already know that this is sort of inevitable, that Judah is going to be the tribe of the kings, but still Ish-bosheth, verse 9 says, is made king over Gilead, the Asherites over Jezreel, and Ephraim, and over Benjamin, even over all Israel. So right now we have David ruling in Hebron over Judah, And we have the rest of the tribes recognizing this Ish-bosheth. Verse 11 says the time that David was king in Hebron over the house of Judah was seven and a half years. Because of this, there is conflict, right? Different tribes recognizing different kings, and so there is civil war.

And eventually, there are three brothers that are recognized. as chasing after Abner, the commander of Saul’s army and Ish-bosheth’s as well. And one of the brothers does not, refuses to turn around. We see his name’s Asahel. and Abner ends up killing Asahel, which does not make his two brothers happy.

David ends up being successful. We see in verse 31, the servants of David had struck down many of Benjamin and Abner’s men, so that 360 men died. God is with David. Chapter 3, verse 1 says, now there was a long war between the house of Saul and the house of David, and David grew steadily stronger, but the house of Saul grew weaker continually. The same pattern that we saw in 1 Samuel. Saul is kind of going in a downward spiral, and God is blessing David. This blessing will culminate, it will peak in the Davidic covenant in chapter 7. But what we see in verses 2 through 5 is it’s not only just two wives, now we have six Once again, demonstrating that David is not a perfect man and there is not a good pattern going on with his view of marriage.

Eventually, Abner is falsely accused of infidelity, or at least we think so, from the text, verses six through eight, and is frustrated with Ish-bosheth and ends up joining David’s side. And now, Joab is not happy that David embraces him. And what Joab tries to convince David of is that Abner, verse 25, the son of Ner, came to deceive David, that this is sort of a superficial joining of your side, that he’s going to double cross you. Joab’s brother was murdered by Abner, and so he sort of has this personal vendetta for Abner. which ends up taking place in the next few verses that Joab murders Abner privately in a way that he exercises vengeance rather than trusting vengeance to God. And so David ends up finding out about this and, of course, is not happy that Joab murdered Abner.

And verse 38 says, the king said to his servants, do you not know that a prince and a great man has fallen this day in Israel? I am weak today, though anointed king, and these men, the sons of Zariah, are too difficult for me. May the Lord repay the evildoer according to his evil. I think there’s a deliberate contrast between Joab and David. David’s approach to righting wrongs is to entrust the circumstances to God. As Pastor Ron preached on in chapter 12 of Romans not too long ago, vengeance is God’s, not our own.

A story that has piqued my interest quite recently is the story of the Count of Monte Cristo. I don’t know if many of you have heard of that novel by Alexander Dumas, written in the 1800s, 1840s. Classic novel is all about vengeance versus trusting justice to God.

A certain successful sailor, and actually boat captain by the name of Edmond Dantes, is falsely accused of insurrection and rebellion towards the king and country. by three different men that are jealous of him because of his job, because of his fiancée, and also because he has some information that could be problematic for one of their careers. And so they give this false claim to the magistrate, if you will, and he ends up going to prison for 15 years for a crime he didn’t commit.

There he meets a priest and the priest tells him of a great treasure. And he eventually escapes the prison, finds the treasure, and comes back to get his revenge as the Count of Monte Cristo. And I mean, his plotting, his plans, they’re so sophisticated. He spends so much time trying to enact a vengeance, personal vengeance, on these three men, four, technically, in particular.

And what the novel shows, at least Dumas doesn’t have the biblical worldview, but what he does show is that there’s problems with trying to take out personal vengeance on individuals and not leaving it to providence. And we would understand it as leaving it to God orchestrating his providence, as it ends up destroying Edmund to a certain extent and destroys a lot of other people who were innocent, family members of those three men. And so we see here, once again, that shows that vengeance is not something that we should take into our own hands. In a similar way, this account of Joab and David’s different responses show that vengeance is the Lord’s. Let’s see here.

We see on chapter five, eventually, David is made king over all of Israel. Eventually, Ish-bosheth is murdered, and Verse one says, all the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron and said, behold, we are your bone and your flesh. Previously, when Saul was king over us, you were the one who led Israel out and in. And the Lord said to you, you will shepherd my people Israel and you will be a ruler over Israel. We were wrong, David. You are the rightful. King. And so verse three says they anointed David King over Israel. Verse five recognizes again that he served at Hebron over Judah for seven and a half years. And in Jerusalem, he reigned 33 years over all Israel and Judah.

Now, it says in verse six that the king and his men went to Jerusalem against the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land, and they said to David, you shall not come in here, but the blind and the lame will turn you away, thinking David cannot enter here.

Nevertheless, David captured the stronghold of Zion, Jerusalem, that is the city of David. Remember in the time of the judges, the people of Israel were supposed to clear out all the Canaanites, and they were unable to clear out the Jebusites. And it was not until David came and recognizing the promises of God, conquered these peoples to take over Jerusalem and making it the city of David, Zion, also known throughout scripture as the city of God, where eventually the worship place of God would be. Also too, Saul’s primary battles were defensive in nature, and David’s were offensive in nature.

And we see that God is certainly blessing David, that he’s not only defending the land that he has, but he’s also going and conquering, fulfilling more of the conquest promised by God. It’s geographically convenient, verse nine shows they were able to protect the city, and verse 10 sort of summarizes what we have been seeing in the last few chapters that David became greater and greater for the Lord God of hosts was with him. Verse 12 says David realized that the Lord had established him as king over Israel and that he had exalted his kingdom for the sake of his people, Israel. He recognized that it was God’s faithfulness that had blessed him.

But we see again, in verse 13, it says, meanwhile, David took more concubines and wives from Jerusalem. Something wrong is going on in David’s heart. He’s fostering certain sins that will end up bearing sinful fruit, as we see with his scandal with Bathsheba. So eventually he fights the Philistines, he inquires of the Lord before he goes out, rather than Joshua, not consulting the Lord before the Gibeonites sought to make a covenant with Israel, we saw in the book of Joshua, so positive there.

And David did what God commanded him, verse 25 says, and he struck down the Philistines and was successful. Now, chapter six is an interesting one, and many of you probably know R.C. Sproul’s study, The Holiness of God. This is a classic account, like Nadab and Abihu, of the holiness of God. That God is to be revered as holy.

They want to move the ark, David wants to move the ark, and so they decide to disregard the commands that God had given them. to be carried on the shoulders of Kohathites, specific Levites, and they weren’t supposed to touch the ark, but instead these men, specifically Uzzah, had the audacity to disobey God, not treating him as holy, and so God struck him down. The ark eventually is brought to Jerusalem, and then chapter 7, this is the key. This is, if you don’t remember any other chapters in 2 Samuel, this is the most foundational, and it’s going to be so important, especially when we get to the prophets, and the prophets talking about a coming kingdom and a coming king.

Verse one says, now it came about when the king lived in his house, and the Lord had given him rest on every side from all his enemies, that the king said to Nathan the prophet, see now I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells within tent curtains. In other words, I live in an awesome house, an awesome castle, and God is in a tent. And so he wants to make God a house, a temple, a permanent place. Remember, they had been moving the tabernacle as a tent, and he wanted a permanent worship place for God.

Nathan at first says, hey, this looks like a good idea, so go ahead. And then God tells Nathan to tell David no. And so God specifically tells David why, in 1 Chronicles, parallel account, that he was a man of bloodshed. But we should read verses eight through 17. God tells David, he says, now therefore, or specifically to Nathan to tell David, thus shall you say to my servant David, thus says the Lord of hosts, I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, to be a ruler over my people Israel.

I have been with you wherever you have gone and have cut off all your enemies from before you. And I will make you a great name. That’s one of the aspects of this promise. Like the names of the great men who are on the earth. I will also appoint a place for my people Israel, God fulfilling his promise made in Deuteronomy, that he would had a specific place of choosing where they would worship. And we’ll plant them that they may live in their own place and not be disturbed again. Now we know later on in Old Testament history, Israel was disturbed again. So this promise points to the future. Even from the day, verse 11, that I commanded judges to be over my people Israel, and I will give you rest from all your enemies.

The Lord also declares to you that the Lord will make a house for you.” David wanted to make God a house. And God says, no, I don’t want you to make me a house, but I will make you a house. When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you who will come forth from you and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.” Some of these aspects of this promise were fulfilled in Solomon, and some weren’t. Solomon did end up building a temple, as we will see in 1 Kings, for God, but His throne was not established, his kingdom was not established forever.

That is a future event to come. Verse 14 says, I will be a father to him and he will be a son to me. When he commits iniquity, I will correct him with the rod of men and the strokes of the sons of men. Once again, iniquity, this isn’t pointing to Jesus, this part of it, that’s pointing to Solomon.

But my loving kindness shall not depart from him as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. Verse 16 says, your house and your kingdom shall endure before me forever. Your throne shall be established forever. So this ultimately finds fulfillment in Christ.

We know from Genesis 3.15 that God promised one would come to crush the head of the serpent, that Christ would come to conquer Satan forever, as we know now.

Genesis 49.10, as mentioned before, the scepter would not depart from Judah. Balaam’s prophecy brings these two promises together, that they’re going to be the same person. So the expectation is that this throne will be established forever in this one person they are looking for. David praises God for his kindness to him, even though David didn’t have anything to deserve this great promise, God gave him a promise to establish his house. And David continues to triumph.

We see in chapter eight, all sorts of different enemies conquered, the Philistines, Moab, Arameans. Verse six says, the Lord helped David wherever he went. Conquers Edomites, verse 14. Verse 15 summarizes and says, so David reigned over all Israel and David administered justice and righteousness for his people. Now, There is a certain man by the name of Mephibosheth, who is the son of Jonathan, and David wants to, he remembers his covenant he made with Jonathan, that in 1 Samuel chapter 20, that he would be kind to Jonathan’s descendants. Mephibosheth couldn’t walk, but David ended up giving him many of the blessings, or many of the blessings that Saul had been given, his land, and he was able to eat at David’s table. Really amazing to show that David really cared about Jonathan and the covenant they made.

Chapter 10 shows further enemies of Israel are defeated. We see Ammon and Aram. And then we get to chapter 11. We get to the second section, David’s transgressions. The narrative changes from here on out. So far we see God has blessed David’s kingdom. Things have been pretty good. David is sinful for sure, not perfect. But now we see what really happens when sin is left unchecked. There’s a sort of a famous adage that I’ve heard people say, that he who falls does not fall far. And it’s very true of David. It wasn’t like he just woke up one day and had an affair. That’s not how sin works. No, there had been several compromises in his life that had led to this great sin with Bathsheba.

I remember one time in prison ministry in LA, there were some people that would come in and out. You know, they would seem like they were doing better. We were excited. And then we would see them a few weeks later and be like, how did you end up back in here? And I remember there was this one man, he knew the scriptures incredibly well, great memory. going to show that he had the head knowledge, but it didn’t seem like God had really worked on his heart. And he was explaining to the chaplain how he ended up back in jail, and he’s like, I was doing so good. Everything was so great. And then I oversaw an underground gambling ring. And it was like, you didn’t just wake up one morning and start a complex underground LA gambling ring. It took several different steps.

But his approach to his understanding of sin, at least at first, is very similar to ours. We like to think that, oh, circumstances are the reason why we sin. Or, oh, it’s just one morning you wake up and, oh my goodness, something crazy like this happens. But no, it’s those little compromises that are so terrible.

I mean, like Israel in the conquest, we as believers, are called to destroy all the inhabitants of the land. Israel was called to wipe out all of the Canaanites in light of God’s promises so that they would not be disciplined on account of their sin. We as believers are called to wipe out all the inhabitants of sin on the land of our heart, knowing the promises of God that we are no longer slaves to sin, so we won’t enter into God’s discipline as well.

With this specific account, a friend of mine texted me a great quote by Bodhi Bacchum recently, an observation that the strongest man in the Bible fell to sexual sin, Samson. The wisest man in the Bible fell to sexual sin, Solomon. And the most godly man in the Bible fell to sexual sin, David.

And his point was, if you say you’re above that, if you don’t need to fight against this, this isn’t something that you need to concern yourself about. You’re essentially making yourself out to be greater than the strongest, the wisest, and the most godly men in scripture. If they had to fight against it, we most certainly do too. And once again, it’s any little sin, no matter how big or how great, it can blossom into something as wicked and evil as this great sin against Uriah. and against God. So we see in chapter 11 verse 1, it says, then it happened in the spring at the time when kings go out to battle.

In other words, David should have been in battle, but he decided to stay back. But David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel, and they destroyed the sons of Ammon and besieged Raba. But David stayed in Jerusalem. Now when evening came, David arose from his bed and walked around on the roof of the king’s house.

And from the roof he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful in appearance. So David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite? David sent messengers and took her. And when she came to him, he lay with her. And when she had purified herself from her uncleanness, she returned to her house.” So you can imagine David’s thought process, right?

It’s very similar, and not just sexual sin, but any kind of sin. His thought process probably was something along the lines of, I’ve done a lot of good things for you, God. I’ve really worked hard. You’re so, you know, if he didn’t say it like this, he probably was thinking about this in some way that, you know, I’ve really done so much for you. I deserve a little bit of something like this. I deserve a little bit of this indulgence because of what I’ve already done for you. All these battles I fought and won, now I deserve to stay back, and more than that, I deserve this sin. We must fight against thoughts that God owes us anything other than eternal punishment, and that everything is a gift of God’s grace.

And so Bathsheba ends up getting pregnant and David has a problem on his hands. This is a great scandal and he can’t be seen as having done this to Uriah, one of his faithful soldiers’ wife. So he decides to bring Uriah back, commands him to come back and tries to get Uriah to go spend time with his wife for people to think that this is Uriah’s child.

But Uriah is so faithful, he says in verse 11, the ark in Israel and Judah are staying in temporary shelters. 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? By your life and the life of your soul, I will not do this thing. Uriah is the faithful one, another unsung hero in this narrative.

And does it say he’s a Jew? That he’s a Hebrew? What is he? He’s Uriah the Hittite. You see the contrast here. The one who has been blessed with the Davidic covenant, the one who’s leading God’s holy nation, kingdom of priests, the one who is special, leading God’s chosen people, is disobeying and is so different with this Uriah, who is not even a Jew. He’s a Gentile. It’s just a crazy thought. Even David tries making him drunk, but even then Uriah was still faithful.

And so David ends up telling Uriah, or sorry, he doesn’t tell Uriah, he hands him a letter to give to Joab to, in battle, have the soldiers walk up towards the edge of the place that they are seeking to siege, the city, and to take a step back so that Uriah dies. This is a really foolish order. We see that Joab, when he tells this servant after Uriah dies, what happened with the battle, he expects for David to be surprised that they had to go up so close to the city.

We see in verse 20, if it happens that the king’s wrath rises and he says to you, why did you go so near to the city to fight? Eventually at the end of verse 21, he’s supposed to say, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also. Terrible military strategy. But sin makes people do stupid things. And that’s exactly what happens.

Interestingly enough, often throughout this narrative, Bathsheba is known as Uriah’s wife. Even verse 26 describes her as the wife of Uriah. once again trying to draw Uriah to our mind, the contrast between David and Uriah being so crazy. So she mourned for her husband and then David took her as his wife. Eventually, the prophet Nathan comes, God gives him a story, sort of an illustration of a similar situation, almost like a parable. of injustice, and David is frustrated and angry, recognizing that the evil person in this parable, if you will, deserves death. Verse 5, as the Lord lives, surely the man who has done this deserves to die.

And Nathan, with his famous words, says, you are the man. Just a random little literature note. I’ve talked in my literature class often about how just because someone is the protagonist doesn’t mean they’re the good guy in a story. David is the protagonist in this account, and Nathan is the antagonist, and yet Nathan’s the one who’s in the right.

And so God ends up telling David in verse 10 through Nathan that the sword will never depart from his house because you’ve despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. And then he says that there’s going to be evil against him from his own household in verse 11.

David recognizes he has sinned and God informs David through Nathan that he has been forgiven and yet his child will still die to show the nations in verse 14 that God is not to be trifled with. If David was blessed for his presumptuousness on God’s grace, the nation saw that, why would they seek to obey him? So David ends up worshiping God even after his child dies, after he fasts and hopes he lives. He doesn’t, this child doesn’t live, dies.

But eventually Solomon is born to Bathsheba. And then just as like a 10, 20, we’ll go 30 second summary of the rest of the book, is the third section of David’s trials, chapters 13 through 24. As God promised through Nathan that there would be much difficulty in his life, even from within his own house. Within his own house, we see in the following chapters, rape, incest, murder. We see an insurrection brought about by his son Absalom to try and overthrow David’s rule.

The rest of David’s life is full of struggle and trial and pain until the very end, we see that David also, or towards the very end, he tries to, or he commands a census to be made of all the people of Israel, sort of asserting sort of implying almost that he owns the people, that they’re his people and not God’s. Joab tells him not to, he still does. God gives him three options for judgment or punishment for that census. David chooses the one of three days of pestilence and 70,000 men die. in Israel.

And so once again, we see how just little bits of compromises at the beginning in David’s life end up leading to this horrid sin that leaves devastating consequences, not only for David, but also the rest of Israel. And I think we can apply to our lives today that we must kill sin, no matter how big or how small, because sin has a snowball effect that if left unchecked, it certainly will destroy us. As Owen said, what, kill sin or else sin will be killing you.

Let’s pray. Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you for the encouragement it brings. Please, Lord, give us, grow our consciences to be even more sensitive to the areas of sin in our lives. Reveal new areas of sin that perhaps we don’t even know about, Lord, that we might kill it to your glory. We thank you that in Christ we have the promise that we’re no longer slaves to sin. And we pray, Lord, that in light of the gospel, we would go about killing sin in our lives, not on the basis of performance, not on the basis of caring so much about what we look like so much as in light of what you have done for us, your great love for us demonstrated on the cross. We know, Lord, that if we pursue sin willingly, it’s loving the very thing that killed our best friend. It’s as if we’re spitting on you as you suffer on the cross, mocking you. So we pray, Lord, against any of these sinful traps. We pray that you would show us these things and grant us the grace to repent and to look to Christ in those moments. We love you and we praise you. It’s in your name we pray these things. Amen.