2 Samuel 11 The Quest for a Better King

Of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak is preaching from his series, The Warrior Poet King, Study of Second Samuel. Let's listen in.

Good morning and welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak, I am the lead pastor here, and we are gathered together this morning in this place to hear from God and to hear from his word. I love the opportunity that we have to gather together to hear from him.

I'm here to listen to him too. Of course, I've been studying all week the things that we're gonna be listening to, but how many of you know that the word of God does not pull punches? Have you noticed that?

Like, it doesn't try to kid-glove us, it doesn't try to put us into a place where we just kind of feel like we're just cocooned and hugged and held all the time. If you're reading this word, if you're reading the same Bible that I am, sometimes you walk away a little bit beat up and bruised from it, right?

Anybody know what I'm talking about on that? I mean, a lot of times, now, if you look at just the mugs, the verses that make it onto coffee mugs, the verses that make it onto motivational posters, now, those are the hugging kind of, you know, just warm, fuzzy kind of quotes, but the types of passages that I'm preaching on this morning don't often produce many of those poster-type quotes.

You guys know what I'm talking about. The word brings to us, of course it brings encouragement, praise God for that, it brings to us honesty, it brings to us conviction, and most importantly, it brings to us what we need most fundamentally, the good news of Jesus Christ, and that is good news.

That is a joy-filled gladness that is brought to us through the Bible, but in the pages of scripture this morning, we're gonna come in contact with a passage that has been set up to intentionally shock us.

The flow of 1 Samuel into 2 Samuel, leading up to chapter 11, is designed to make chapter 11 shocking to our system. What we're gonna read here in just a moment is raw. It is astonishing. It is artistically crafted to make us real and feel disoriented a little bit.

What we're gonna read, ironically, when I read it, I want you to pay attention to this. The text avoids emotional language intentionally. It avoids emotions in order to let the shocking and stark actions of David stand out in contrast.

We're not left with the impressions of how people felt about what he did. We're left with what he did. If you harbor any notion that the Old Testament is a book of heroes, so that we, you know, if your idea of the Old Testament is a bunch of heroes or role models for us to follow, then this sermon this morning is for you.

It really is for all of us in that it snaps us out of the common problem we all face in this world. We are all looking for saviors. We are looking for a savior. Every human heart is designed to know that it's not filled, that it needs more than what it can obtain here, but we have a tendency to look at the world around us and look for earthly saviors.

For some of us, it's been hope for political solutions. The hope maybe for some of us is in wise investment, or the hope for family relationships, or the home in actual real world leaders, or the hope in entertainment to numb our minds.

How many of you know that there's all different kinds of false saviors in the world? We all at times are enticed to look to something in this created world to give us peace and comfort.

And I would suggest to you in all honesty.

That David is as good a bet as any. When it comes to places to put your trust, this man was an amazing man. He was, I would kind of classify him as a renaissance man of sorts. Musically gifted, a published author and songwriter, a man of wise judgment, a man with noble calling, a man who was given the title by God Almighty, the Almighty God said of David, this is a man after my own heart.

In other words, this is a man who loves me and wants to please me. This is a man who seeks after me. This is a man who is connected to me, says the Almighty God. How many of you think those are some high commendation?

Those are some high words for King David. And then in the last two chapters, we saw him keeping covenants and faithfulness, honoring those who didn't deserve it. We saw him conquering all of his enemies and it being said of David that wherever he went, the Lord gave him victory.

So when we come to this chapter, we feel like the text has climbed a mountain only to dump us off the other side, falling down the cliff. If this is the way that a man after God's own heart behaves, then how many of you would say we're in trouble?

Do you know where the text is going? We haven't read it yet, but how many of you know where we're going? We're all in trouble if this is the way that a man after God's own heart behaves. Can David do the things we're about to read and still be God's man?

Recast, church, humanity needed a better king. David is about as good as it gets, and he is not a good man. I don't think you'll disagree with me at the end of this text. Instead, he has been called and brought into the faithful covenant of a sovereign and faithful God.

David is not the savior, but his failure in this text points us all to the desperate need for the one who would be born of his line who will save his people from their sins. So let's open our Bibles, if you're not already there, to 2 Samuel chapter 11.

And again, 2 Samuel 11, if you've got a device, if you've got one of those scripture journals, turn over into this. Familiar passage to many of us, but we're gonna read this sordid account of the tragic fall of the mighty King David.

2 Samuel chapter 11. In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel, and they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.

It happened late one afternoon when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house that he saw from the roof a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful. And David sent and inquired about the woman, and one said, is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?

So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness, then she returned to her house, and the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, I am pregnant.

So David sent word to Joab, send me Uriah the Hittite, and Joab sent Uriah to David. When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab was doing and how the people were doing and how the war was going. Then David said to Uriah, go down to your house and wash your feet.

And Uriah went out of the king's house, and there followed him a present from the king. But Uriah slept at the door of the king's house with all the servants of his lord and did not go down to his house.

When they told David, Uriah did not go down to his house, David said to Uriah, have you not come from a journey? Why did you not go down to your house? Uriah said to David, the ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field.

Shall I then go to my house to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife? As you live and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing. Then David said to Uriah, remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back.

So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. And David invited him and he ate in his presence and drank so that he made him drunk, and in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house.

In the morning, David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. In the letter he wrote, set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting and the drawback from him, that he may be struck down and die.

And as Joab was besieging the city, he assigned Uriah to the place where he knew there were valiant men, and the men of the city came out and fought with Joab, and some of the servants of David among the people fell.

Uriah, the Hittite, also died. Then Joab sent and told David all the news about the fighting, and he instructed the messenger, when you have finished telling all the news about the fighting to the king, then if the king's anger arises and if he says to you, why did you go so near to the city to fight?

Did you not know that they would shoot from the wall? Who killed Abimelech, the son of Jerebosheth? Did not a woman cast an upper millstone on him from the wall so that he died at Thebes? Why did you go so near the wall?

Then you shall say, your servant Uriah, the Hittite, is dead also. So the messenger went and came and told David all that Joab had sent him to tell. The messenger said to David, the men gathered an advantage over us and came out against us in the field.

But we drove them back to the entrance of the gate. Then the archer shot at your servant from the wall. Some of the king's servants are dead, and your servant Uriah, the Hittite, is dead also. David 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. When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah, her husband, was dead, she lamented over her husband. And when the morning 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.

Let's pray.

Father, I pray that an appropriate unsettledness would hit our hearts, an appropriate weight would strike us in these moments where we are intended not to merely look outside of ourselves to the heart of another man, but we are meant to look into our own chest to look at what we're made of, to look what we are capable of.

Father, it's a heavy thing to think about the egregiousness of the sins of David. It's another thing to think about him being declared a man after your own heart in light of these things. So Father, I pray that you would open our eyes to our own frailty, open our own eyes to our own desperate darkness that is within our own souls and within our own hearts, the very sins that we are capable of.

Father, I pray that you would meet us here in this place not merely for conviction, not merely for an assessment of the darkness of our own hearts, but then the glory of the salvation that has been given to us in your Son.

We are so unworthy of your grace. We are so unworthy of your kindness. We are unworthy of the very next breath we will take here in this gathering, and yet your mercy continues day after day after day.

Let that settle on us, Father, that your mercy, your grace, your compassion towards sinners like us, let it ignite our hearts with passion, with zeal, with gladness, not just another Sunday, not just another bank of songs to sing before we listen to your word and go to lunch.

Meet us here in this place, Father. I recognize that there are some here right in the throes of darkness, caught by their sin and about to be hung by it. Father, I pray that you would meet each one of us right where we're at, strengthen the arms that are weak, and bring grace to the heart that is in desperate need.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

All right, yeah, you can go to be seated,.

And I do encourage you to keep your Bibles open to 2 Samuel chapter 11. We're gonna walk through that passage together, and like I say, every week, if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts, take advantage of that.

You're not gonna distract me if you need to get up or use the restroom out the double doors down the hallway on the left-hand side, but again, just in your device or in your Bible, if you have a scripture journal or whatever, keep it open to 2 Samuel as we're gonna walk through that.

There are a few different ways we could organize the passage that's in front of us today. One way would be to look at the sin at the start and then the cover-up and kind of see two big chunks of it. Another way is to follow the text as it bounces back and forth geographically between Jerusalem and Rabbah.

Different scholars have organized it in different ways, have seen different outlines. There's also a unique way to do this, and that's where the pace picks up and picks up and slows down in the dialogue, and so some people have seen that.

I'm gonna do it this way. I'm gonna give us four points this morning and get those to you at the start. It's gonna be about David and his relationships.

With different individuals.

So in verses two through five, we're gonna see David and his relationship to Bathsheba, or David and Bathsheba. Then in verses six through 13, we're gonna be seeing David and Uriah. 13 through 25, David and Joab, and then wrap it up in 26 and 27 with David and God.

So how does David relate to these four persons? We will see that here in the text. So let's begin by jumping in the deep end and consider the way that David related to Bathsheba here in the text. How many of you are familiar with this story?

Just curious, go ahead and raise your hand.

Keep it up for just a second. If you've heard this story before, you know it. I think many of us have heard sermons on it. You've thought about it before, and it is kind of a stereotypical message, but it's one of the centerpieces of obviously the book of 2 Samuel.

Verse one sets us up with the context, understanding what's going on around and swirling around these events. It's likely that the opening phrase gives a timeframe of about a year since the end of chapter 10, where it says in the springtime of the year when kings go out to war, there's a little bit of a time designation in the Hebrew language there that gives an indication that it's about the same time as the last attack and the last battle that happened in the last chapter.

A year has transpired, and we're back at it again. And remember that David has unfinished business in the Ammonite capital of Rabbah. He sent a delegation there to offer condolences to the new king over the death of his father, the father being Nahash, the son being Hanun.

Nahash has died. He sends a delegation to comfort Hanun in the death of his father, the king. But Hanun, who is now the new king of Ammon, shamed David's delegation, shaved off half of their beards, and cut off the backside of the robes and sent him home in that condition to shame them.

The result is, of course, an ongoing war. We saw the first battle of the war last week that resulted in David conquering Ammon's allies, Syria and Zobah. They came to defend Ammon, and David wiped them out, went home, took a year off, and now is sending his troops back.

A year has passed.

David is now sending his military under the command of Joab to finish what the Ammonite king started in shaming his sons. So all that's the context. But the Israelite military, it says in the text here in verse one, ravaged the Ammonites and now has set siege to their capital.

They're going in to basically finish this entire affront to their name. But David remained at Jerusalem. And there's been a lot mentioned about that in commentaries and in Bible studies and all of that.

David remained in Jerusalem. We know that Saul, I mean, to put this in perspective, you can go back to Saul, who is not painted in a good light in scripture. But we have King Saul, the predecessor to King David, who needed to be replaced with King David.

We have him leading the Israelites to war against the Ammonites, going out in armor, going out with a sword, going out in battle. We see Saul lead the Israelites against the Philistines. We see Saul and his son Jonathan were so involved in wars and battles, actually physically present leading the troops, that they lost their lives in a battle on the slopes of Mount Gilboa.

It was common, I only point that out to just say that it was extremely commonplace in this time, in this era, for a king to go out militarily to lead.

Now, how many of you know,.

Just from what you know about David in scripture, that David was a mighty military commander? And he was good with a sword. He was good with a sling. Every indication is that he was a mighty man in battle, and he is not going out to lead.

It was not common for a king to hang back from battles in this era. I think it's fair to say that the text means for us to see David in a complacent state when we come to chapter 11. He is likely allowed, I'm speculating a little bit here, but I believe he's likely allowed some of his nobility to cloud his judgment.

And so verse two has David, I think the language here is intentional. He's getting up late in the afternoon from his siesta to go up on the roof and check out his kingdom.

Now, how many of you know.

That his troops are out in battle against Rabbah, and he's gotta kinda get himself up off the couch to see what's going on? Are you getting the picture here? And that's when it happens. That's when he spies her, Bathsheba taking a bath.

And the text lets us know unequivocably that she was beautiful. It's interesting that the Hebrew, the human language, yeah, the human language, the Hebrew language is more precise than English when it comes to some of these kinds of descriptors like beauty.

They have a word that accounts for internal beauty and a word that has more of an external beauty. Any guess what word is used here in that context? It is the external beauty. Bathsheba was easy to look at is what the text is saying.

Now, some have been critical, and I wanna nip this in the bud. I wanna cut any lines of thought that you might have right now running in this direction. Some have been critical of her bathing within eyesight of the king's palace.

But I wanna be clear that this text does not go down that rabbit hole at all. There is no question that the text does not waver in blaming David for this entire scenario. This is David. This is his problem.

He is, in the text of scripture, the guilty party here. Her actions, of course, I wanna just clarify for you, her actions and behavior are not above scrutiny. But in this context where she is about to be raped, it is not the best place to address modesty and propriety.

We should save those discussions for the much more tame pastoral epistles where Paul encourages internal endowment of good works for women versus dressing in a way that gets external attention. Save it for 1 Timothy.

Don't bring it into your thoughts about 2 Samuel. This text is not at all about modesty.

Do you hear me?

This is not a text about modesty. David sent servants to inquire as to her identity, the identity of the pretty lady on the roof. And she is introduced to us as Bathsheba. And she has introduced all the words here matter, all the words with intention.

She is introduced by her name, Bathsheba. She is a human being who bears a name. And she also has a father who knew. She's introduced as the daughter of Eliam.

Why?

Because the text wants to make sure that we put her in the context of a family. She has people. She's the daughter of Eliam. She is the wife of Uriah the Hittite. A name that's gonna come up later in literally at the very end of 2 Samuel, David's 30 most powerful military commanders are gonna be named and he's one of them.

He's in the top 30 of all of David's soldiers. That's this guy. And Bathsheba is his wife. Go ahead and raise your hand if you agree with me.

That this is where the story should end.

Raise your hand. Is this where the story should end? Please, oh please, raise your hands, church. We want the story to end here, do we not? Don't we wish that this is where it stopped? Don't we wish that this is where David said, wife, daughter, done.

Go back and take a nap. Take a cold shower. Do something different. We want the story to end here. May God grant all of us, church, I pray for you, may God grant all of us to have more times where this is where the story ends on our temptations.

Amen?

May this be where it stops. I wanna make a big point of this because I believe that this very verse here where we're talking about her being a daughter and naming her father and naming her husband, I believe that this is a 1 Corinthians 10 .13 kind of passage.

I want you to write that down. I want you to jot that reference down and I really wanna challenge you to memorize it. I want you to memorize 1 Corinthians 10 .13. It states this. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.

Well, what's he saying there?

What's Paul writing to the Corinthians there? He's saying that you've never been tempted by anything that others haven't. Any temptation that's ever struck you, others have felt it too. You're not the first one to experience any novel temptation.

Others feel it. But God is faithful. I like how the attention turns directly from the sin to God, the God who holds us, the God who we trust. God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability.

In other words, you've never faced a temptation that you couldn't have said no to. You have always had no as an option. By the power of God, by the faithfulness of God, and with the temptation, God, he, will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it.

Always provide an exit ramp. Always provide a way out. Church, God will always give you an opportunity to get out of your sin. God here, I believe in the text, is faithfully providing David what he needs to be jogged awake from this very temptation.

She is a man's daughter. She is one of his most mighty military officers' wives. David is being offered a very stark reminder of where this road goes if it goes any further. There's a name for it. It is adultery at best.

And God is giving him a chance to say no. He's giving him a chance to say no. And yet, we move on to the text. And David acts with the staccato, I call it staccato verbs of sin. Quick, short, he sends, he takes, he lays with.

Pretty, pretty succinct.

Takes, sends for, takes, and lays with. Verse four, hits our ears with pace, with intention. The text speeds up and slows down for emphasis, and here the author is artistically conveying the frenzy that sin often represents in our lives.

Quick, heated, impulsive, not thought through, just done.

How many of you can relate?

Staccato verbs of sin. He did this, he then did this, he then did this. And let me be clear, church. This is, what we're encountering here in the text is an unquestionable abuse of power. We talk about the sin of adultery with David, and how many of you ever heard of David's adultery?

Raise your hand if you've heard of David's adultery. How many of you have heard of David's rape? It's not a word we use very often for it,.

But it's what's happening.

It is not just merely, it is not just merely the sin of adultery. Nothing in the text rules out rape as the category of this event. He sends for a married woman, and nothing in this text implies that she wanted anything to do with him or anything to do with this.

This is a horrendous account of King David, and it seems to come at us out of the blue in the text with intention. Well, ask yourself honestly, in your own heart, why are we surprised when people fall and fail?

Why is it always that the person who killed, the serial killer's next door neighbor goes, well, no, he was actually a pretty good guy. Every interview always looks like that, doesn't it? It's always like, no, no, I mean, I don't know, he just seemed to love his wife and kids and was normal.

Why are we surprised when people fail? And I think it's because our hearts long to believe that there is true honor, there is true nobility, there is true beauty, and if we're not careful, we will place our hope for those things in the wrong place.

Many of us have.

A place you could place all of your trust and all of your eggs in a place like a pastor or a father or a mother or a grandparent or an athlete or even a biblical character. But David's fall is recorded for us to make sure we understand that he, David, is not the beauty, he is not the honorable, he is not the measure of nobility.

There is only one person under heaven who is true, who is honorable, who is noble and genuinely full of beauty and his name is Jesus Christ, fix your eyes on him. The only hope, the only place that beauty.

Can truly be found.

Well, notice the devastating end of verse four. This breaks my heart. Then she returned to her house. She returned to her house. She's cast off like a used garment. Now she gets to go home and consider the rest of her life having been defiled by her king.

Have you thought about her in this story? Have you considered this poor woman? What defilement, what misery, what darkness? What kind of thoughts would you be thinking? What kind of things would be running through your head?

What will Uriah think? What if he finds out? Well, he can't find out. He can't know. I will die with this and I will not let a soul know. Can you imagine the pain? Can you imagine the heartache as she goes home to her own house and to her own bed?

The author seems to silence, by the way, I just evoked emotion in you and the text is silent about any of that, isn't it? Did the text tell you how she felt? No. Nope, because that's not the point. The author seems to silence all emotions in this text to put a more sharp spotlight on David's actions, what he does.

We, of course, are much more concerned with the feelings. We are moved and thoughtful in the realm of emotions because that's where the drama lies, let's be honest. In the feelings is often for us where we think the guilt lies.

This is where the justification of our own hearts lie, does it not? But I felt so hurt, I felt so lonely, I felt so, how many justifications for sin begin with the words I felt? Do they not all? I felt so hurt and you can imagine why I responded the way that I did.

I was feeling all of these deep feelings so I had to act on them to be true to myself. Is that not the battle cry of our culture? The feelings. Justification of sin almost always includes emotions. Bathsheba wanted David, didn't she?

Well, the text doesn't say. The text is silent to her feelings in this. Well, Joab headed out for Uriah and was glad to see him gone. Nope, doesn't say so in the text. The text doesn't give us any of the way that people are feeling about these events.

Just the raw data of sin in all of its ugly darkness. There laid bare for us the actions, the behaviors. We are forced to take in the behavior without the benefit of seeing how people felt because hear me carefully church, sin is of its own nature devastating regardless of how people feel about it.

Regardless of how people feel about it, it is devastating. Sin is not merely defined like our culture defines it as hurting someone's feelings. Is that not the primary way that we conceive.

Of sin in our culture today?

Well, if it doesn't hurt anybody, it's okay, it's fine as long as everybody's in agreement. We invented the idea that this is a better scenario if she consented and was into David.

You get what I'm saying?

How many of you just can picture that? Like it's better if she was okay with it and kind of wanted him.

You get what I'm saying?

Is that not what our culture tells us? Just two consenting adults, right? Doing what comes natural to them. Oh, she was good with it. Oh, she was kind of glad to get with the king. Oh, okay, okay, I get it.

No, no, no church, sin is actions and thoughts that are in opposition to God's good plan and God's good design, full stop. That is sin. Well, in devastation, Bathsheba's only granted two words in the entire text of this account.

They're in verse five, and yes, in English, there are three words, in Hebrew, just two words. What are they? I'm pregnant. It's the only thing she says, I'm pregnant. David has abused his power, he has raped a married woman, and she is now pregnant.

This is a fact from these five verses and it is with intention that she is identified as the woman in verse five. The author is not playing around with words, he's intentional, the woman. She has not been treated as Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah.

She has been treated as an object for the gratification of the lust of the king of Israel. How does David relate to Bathsheba?

He treats her as an object.

Full stop. On verses six through 13, we see David relating to Uriah, her husband, he immediately sets in motion a big cover-up. If he can get Uriah to sleep with his wife, obviously, I don't even hardly need to state it, then just maybe the whole problem will go away.

So David demonstrates that he has no intention to an ongoing relationship with Bathsheba. How could he? She's married, but even just in the attempted cover-up, it displays his treatment of her as an object.

He has no intention of any type of ongoing relationship with this woman. There is no doubt that he has just merely used her, even in the method and the way that he seeks to cover it up. Well, we're gonna just let her get with her husband, everything's gonna go okay, they're gonna stay married, nobody's gonna spill the beans, it's all gonna be good.

Can you see the horrendous logic that sin has caused in David's mind? Uriah, of course, is out with the military. He's one of David's most powerful men. He's out at the siege of Rabbah, and he's sent for, and he comes back to Jerusalem at his king's bidding.

David pretends to be interested in an eyewitness account of the battle, asking Uriah questions in verse seven, just kind of heaping on for us, as we know what's really going on, just how grotesque all of this attempted cover-up really is.

We know it's all an act, we know what has just happened, we know why he summoned Uriah, but then he proceeds to pretend to ask questions of Uriah for an eyewitness account of the battlefield. David first attempts a gentle nudge for Uriah to go home, clean up, and spend the night there with his wife.

He even sent along with Uriah a present, a gift. Wonder if there's a little bit of guilt going on in David. We see King David grasping for control while his world is spinning out of control due to the wickedness he has allowed to control him.

He gave in to his lust in a moment of laziness and boredom, and the consequence of sin is now running the show. I think all of us have been there at some point in our lives where we've felt like things were kind of careening out of control because we told a lie, because we have something that we've done wrong that has to be multiplied, sin upon sin to try to cover it up, and I want to point out a reality that is worth just a moment of our time here this morning, and that is just simply to state the obvious, what I hope is obvious to you anyways, we cannot control the consequences of our sin.

We don't get to choose the consequences. Sin grows as we see it in this text. Sin is notorious for leading us down the road of unintended consequences. I didn't mean for that to happen. On its surface, it promises peace, pleasure, relaxation, and even an easy coverup.

Oh, it'll be easy to just push that aside, but David is here trying to manage what will not be managed, what will not be contained. Well, Uriah proves to be a more noble man than David, at least on this front.

He sleeps in the servant's quarters by the door of the palace and refuses to go down to his house in comfort. The dialogue slows to emphasize the honor of Uriah in contrast to the severe and grotesque dishonor that David is weaving together here.

Verses 10 and 11 are long verses of dialogue, and Uriah says that his military buddies are out sleeping in tents during a siege. He cannot enjoy a meal at home and time with his wife, while even the Ark of the Covenant is out exposed in a tent.

He says, by your life, David, I will not do this thing and go to my house. Now, David had to pull himself up off the couch to go catch a glimpse of Uriah's beautiful wife bathing, while Uriah refuses everyday comforts and solidarity with his fellow soldiers.