Coveting is the Path to the Dark Side

The Image of God, Satan’s Hatred, and the Fall of Humanity

Yeah, let's just put it this way, the children of Israel were really good at complaining and they were demonstrating for us, if you would, in perfect picture form for us to see it in our own lives, how we don't trust God and we complain and all this kind of stuff.

It's quite terrible. This is what it looks like to not have faith. Well, here's the thing, when we perfectly reflect the image of God, we would automatically recognize that our life, our being, our existence, everything we need to sustain it would all come from God and we would give him perfect praise and thanks for it.

So I have a theory and you have to just put it into the theory category and that is that Satan, because of his just abject hatred for God and his love for himself, which is really exemplified in chapter 14 of Isaiah, I will ascend to the highest heights, I will sit on the mountain of assembly, I will make myself, this is all how the devil talks, that it's pretty clear that what he heard God say that the day you eat of the fruit you will die, he heard him say you will surely die and it's very clear that Jesus says of the devil, and this is where you get the interpretive from scripture interpretive scripture, Jesus says from the beginning, the beginning is a theologically charged word, goes back to Genesis, the devil was a liar and a murderer, that Satan's intent was to murder the human race made in the image of God and to just make it even that much more delicious in a demonic way, was going to have God be the one murdering humanity, that was what the intent was.

And so we know this from Jesus's words about him being a liar and a murderer from the beginning. So you take that, you take that, bring it back to the front, now you can see the motivation behind the devil.

Where the devil shot himself in the foot, scripture actually teaches, it's not in causing us to fall, where the devil shot himself in the foot was actually crucifying Christ. That's where he didn't understand what was going on.

And so in his murderous way of thinking, he's going to kill the son of God, not understanding that by that very act, it would undo him. And so in scripture makes that very clear, that had the principalities understood this, they would not have crucified Christ.

So the devil didn't figure out the plan. And the devil played his part perfectly, and because of that, the thing that undid him was not the fall, but the death of God. So that's what you have to kind of look at it that way.

But great questions, because they're kind of provocative. You're thinking in the right direction, it's just you have to pull in and get the right things in the right categories there. So yeah. All right, let's pray and we'll get started.

Lord Jesus, again, we recognize that your word teaches us that we cannot understand your word apart from your spirit. Please send your spirit so that we may rightly understand what is revealed here, that as we look at the mirror of your law regarding covenanting, that you would uncover and reveal to us our own sin and shortcoming.

And then through faith, trust in Christ and what he has done for us so that we recognize that we are forgiven and then bear fruit in keeping with repentance and good works towards.

Others.

We ask in Jesus' name, amen. Last two commandments. Now, this is going to seem kind of crazy, but we've been doing the Ten Commandments for like ever, many moons now. The whole point of this is that this is where we were at as we were reading through the book of Exodus.

And we decided to drill in. Actually, your pastor decided for you to drill in and dig down on the commandments and do a harder look at it. And the hope is that in looking at the Ten Commandments, you can recognize number one, your own sin, recognize the magnitude of what each of these commandments demands from us from God, recognize how we fall short, trust in Jesus, that you are forgiven and reconciled.

And the reason why we do good works, the commandments define for us what a good work is. We do these good works not in order to be saved, but because we is saved. We are saved. You always have to discuss it in this manner.

Coveting, Contentment, and the Ninth and Tenth Commandments

Now, the last two commandments, they seem a little bit redundant, but they're not. And so Ninth and Tenth Commandments both have to do with coveting. We'll look at them together. Coveting of stuff, material possessions is in one category.

Coveting of people associated with your neighbor or living beings associated with your neighbor. So cattle would fall under living beings, and then wife, spouse, employees, and things like that would also fall into that.

So it can kind of fall into two categories. And the coveting thing we'll see in Scripture is a form of idolatry, self-idolatry, if you would, but it's a form of idolatry. And it's really kind of one of the major roots of all kinds of evil.

So Ninth Commandment, you shall not covet your neighbor's house. The Catechism asks the question, what does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not scheme. What a word, scheme. Isn't that how people work, though?

And you'll notice all the really good soap operas always have a schemer in them. Did anyone else notice that? Or maybe it's just me. But you know what I'm saying. Like any good Netflix binge-watching program, you know, you're going to watch this on Netflix, they're always going to have somebody who's the schemer who, you know, literally every waking moment they're trying to manipulate and twist things in order for their own game.

But this is all sinful. So we should fear and love God so that we do not scheme to get our neighbor's inheritance, house, or get it in a way which only appears right. Yeah, that's the other piece of this, is that there's all kinds of legal loopholes where you can steal something from somebody legally.

We don't do that. But you help and be of service to your neighbor in keeping it. Tenth Commandment, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, manservant, maidservant, ox, donkey, anything that belongs to your neighbor.

What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not entice or force away our neighbor's wife, workers, animals, or turn them against him, which is always the way it works, isn't it? You know, it's like, you know, if you're going to, you want that guy's wife, you find a way to kind of like get it in her mind.

Yeah, that husband of yours, he's just worthless. And you turn her affections away from her husband. And of course, towards you, that's how that works. So force away our neighbor's wife, workers, animals, or turn them against him, but urge them to stay and to do their duty.

Central thought then on these commandments is God created us to be, and here's an important.

Word. Ready?

Content, content. The opposite of coveting is content. To be content with the gifts by which he sustains our lives. So you think, you know, what are some of the reasons why people are not content? Well, because, well, it's all about me.

It's all about what I want. And then I'll note this, that watch television and every 10 to 15 minutes, there's a block of commercials. And the whole purpose behind these blocks of commercials is to make you discontent.

So there you are, you're flipping channels, you're watching the Vikings and you know, and all of a sudden on comes a commercial. Have you got the latest giz blamo microwave?

Yeah.

You're sitting there going, why would I need a giz blamo microwave? Well, this microwave can cook pizza in 30 seconds. Your lousy old microwave that you have, it takes three minutes to cook a slice of pizza.

This can do it in 30 seconds. Imagine how much better your life would be with two minutes and 30 seconds more for yourself. And you're sitting there going, I need to get myself a giz blamo microwave. And so this is all you're thinking about, right?

Everything about commercials is designed to make you feel like you're, you're missing.

Out.

You, it's to create discontent so that you are heading into town with your credit card in hand, ready to get the latest thing. That's the, this is how our society works and it plays off of our inherent greed and love for self, which is all part of the snake bit thing that we talked about.

Yeah, I, I, this is why I always say prayers for you Vikings fans every year. But then again, I was in a cult, I'm a cults fan. So last year was miserable. So the question then is what is coveting? Coveting is the sinful desire in our hearts to acquire for ourselves anything that belongs to our neighbor.

It's also that this sinful desire to draw away from our neighbor for our own benefit. Anyone who is important to a neighbor, a spouse, a friend, or so on. And I want you to think about this and, and that is, is that friends oftentimes can be the thing that you're coveting.

And we see this in how humans kind of divide up into clicks. It's weird how it works this way, but you see it where in this click, this gal has this friend and this gal in this click wants that friend to be her friend.

And so the way you accomplish that feat to get this person to be their friend rather than her friend is you destroy the character of the friend so that you turn her against them and now you two are friends and that other person is X out of the equation.

And this is just how it works. And there's, I like when we talk about the doctrine of original sin, you know, that's the thing where we talk about where we're all corrupted as a result of our fall into sin collectively as humans in Adam and Eve.

But moving from then on, there are no original sins. You know, this is all the same nasty stuff. What you experienced in junior high and high school and those of you who are homeschooled, you wouldn't save from some of this, but you still have your sibling rivalries going on as best way I could put it.

But the idea is, is that what you experienced in junior high and high school and junior high in particular, that was like the worst for me. You know, I think it should be illegal to force any child to go to junior high.

It was awful. I mean, that's that age when some kids hit puberty and others don't and, and they have no check on their tongues and the bullying that goes on and the clickiness. When I was in junior high school, some kids discovered popular music.

I hadn't discovered it yet and you know, mercilessly ridiculed and, and of course I hadn't hit puberty yet. So I ended up having to eat my lunch in the bathroom a few times to keep myself from being, well, beat up.

You know, it's just a terrible thing. Nobody should have, we need to, we need a law. Nobody should have to go to junior high school.

Yeah. Abolish.

Get them out of here.

Anyway.

So the idea then is what you experienced there, it still continues on in adulthood. It still does. And it doesn't matter if you're in your twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, I would say this, the older you get, the more complex the schemes become for the person who's doing the scheming, but it's still the same junior high behavior.

And the reason for it is because of our sinful nature. Now let's take a look at what scripture says in this regard, and we're going to look at a few passages, Romans chapter seven. We're going to do a little bit of work in here in context.

The verse I want to get to is verse eight, but I want to point something out here in the book of Romans. And there's a very important point to bring up. And this has to do with properly preaching and teaching law and gospel.

One of the things we recognize is that scripture makes a very clear distinction between the purpose that God has given us his law and the purpose for which he's given us the gospel. You do not understand the law properly.

If you think that the reason why God gave us our law, his law is so that we can obey it in order to be considered righteous before God. That's self-righteousness. And here's the thing. There are a lot of people who are Christians who think that's the reason why God gave us.

The law.

And so what ends up happening in these churches is you will get a lot of law, but you don't hear any gospel. So it becomes, here's your problem. You don't measure up.

That's law.

God's law says you got to do this. And you sit there and go, but I'm not doing it. Solution? Try really hard to do it. And then God will be happy with you. You see the problem with this situation here is what's missing?

The cross.

The biblical solution is not you've got a problem, try harder, fix it, then God will love you. You know, the gospel teaches us God saw you in your sinful dead state and he loved you and sent Christ to bleed and die for you, and he's made you alive in Christ.

The law reveals your need for a savior, shows how far short you've fallen, so that then you hear the gospel, Christ has bled and died for you, reconciled you to the Father, and forgiven and redeemed you, and you are now adopted in his family.

You have a good standing with God. And as one who has been set free from slavery to sin, death, and the devil, and the world, and its temptations, you now bear fruit in keeping with repentance in good works for your neighbor.

So you'll notice, big difference altogether. But in the churches where the problem is you're not measuring up, you've got to measure up, and God ain't going to love you until you do, what does that do to the people who hear that kind of preaching?

Well, it kills them, but the other thing it does is it causes them, kind of Adam and Eve style, to put on fig leaves, and their sin problem actually gets exacerbated. And we're going to see that when you preach the law without the gospel, what you're ending up doing is giving people and their sinful nature ideas about what to do.

And since self-righteousness means you can't ever really confess what's really wrong, or that you're a sinner, what it ends up doing, you ever put like stone pavers in your yard, you ever turn one of those things over, like in the summertime and all the bugs and the creepy crawlies and the spiders and the bleh.

What preaching the law without the gospel does is it creates an environment where the creepy crawlies in your own life get out of control. It's not a mistake that certain well-known pastors who've had spectacular moral failings were known for harping on a particular sin.

Always preaching about the problem out there, and them people who do this thing and that thing, and then they get caught breaking the law doing the very thing they were preaching about Sunday after Sunday.

And the reason for this is, we're going to see this, is that when you preach the law in that way, your sinful nature goes, that kind of sounds fun, I should try that.

No joke.

Watch what the text says. Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.

For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, listen to this, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. If you're going to preach law and gospel, if you're going to preach only the law, understand this, you're going to end up arousing sinful passions within the hearers.

So this is why you preach the law to convict people of sin, and you placard Christ. If you preach law and then say, you've got to try harder, now we've got a problem. I'm not obeying enough, and my sinful nature has actually been aroused by that kind of.

Preaching.

It's a very scary situation. And so legalistic churches oftentimes have a very hidden, a very real seedy underbelly where people literally have some very terrible vices, and there's no way for them to get help for it, because to admit the problem is to admit that I'm a sinner, and there's no gospel being preached there.

So law and gospel have to go together. Now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the spirit, not in the old way of the written code.

So what shall we say? That the law is sin? Sometimes people overreact and sit there and go, well, we're just not going to preach the.

Law then.

No, not by no means.

Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. That's the purpose of the law. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, you shall not covet. And here's the miserable state of being, well, snakebit.

But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.

The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment deceived me, through it killed me. So the law, it is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

So the problem is we're not. That's the point. So what oftentimes happens then, so we're talking in the context of coveting, but keep this out here for just a second. What oftentimes happens is that when people are abused in churches that preach law, law, law, law, law, law, law, law, law, oftentimes they will react and end up in the opposite ditch.

Now, this is going to be a broad brush statement, but I think it can, it would bear out. Oftentimes when you see within a region culturally where liberalism has kind of taken hold of the churches, if you rewind the timeline a bit.

So over here we got liberalism. They're ordaining women and homosexuals and there's no restraint on sin and you don't hear God's law preached at all. Well, rewind the tape, come back 30, 40, 50 years.

What are they hearing in the churches? Law, legalism and antinomianism are flip sides of the exact same coin. Neither of them are Christianity, which we have got to recognize this. So the solution to the liberalism that we see over here is not a return to pull yourself up by your self-righteous bootstraps and get yourself back in line and, you know, and buck up.

That's not the solution. The solution for this is law and gospel. The solution for this is law and gospel because neither of these are Christianity. They're just opposite ditches. Christianity lives in the tension between God's law and gospel.

You can't break the tension. If you break the tension, you'll end up in one ditch or another. So oftentimes people who've been abused by legalism will end up over in this other ditch. But they create their own weird kind of legalism itself, the legalism of love, which is still law.

It's just a different spin on it. Does that make sense? So my my admonition then on this little bunny trail went on would be this. It's very easy, and I mean this really easy to take a look at somebody who is liberal that, you know, it's one thing to rebuke a public teacher who's teaching false doctrine that's liberal, but you might know somebody who's under the sway of a liberal teacher.

And the best thing you can do to help them would be to listen to their story because the story they tell you just might. In fact, there's a really high probability be a story of I used to go to churches like this and it nearly made me commit suicide.

I always felt that God was angry at me, that that there was nothing I could do, no matter how hard I tried to please that God. And so they've ended up over here, an empathetic ear to that person and say rather than saying you're just some weird liberal social justice granola crunching tree hugger.

OK, which they might be, but that just getting in their face and talking that way isn't going to help them. All right, that's going to get their back up and they're not going to listen to you because they're in just as much danger over here as they were over here.

But oftentimes we don't see self-righteous legalism as the exact same kind of threat as liberalism is. We don't. But it is. Neither of them are true. In fact, I would say this, read the book of Galatians, the book of Galatians is written against that self-righteous legalism and the apostle Paul doesn't pull any punches and he saves his sharpest rebukes and strongest rhetoric for the churches in Galatia who are into this self-righteous legalism.

I mean, so much so he says that if you believe a different gospel than the one we preached, you're damned. And then the apostle Paul, not being politically correct and a little rough around the edges because the whole thing centered around circumcision, literally later says those who are troubling you, I wish they would go and cut the whole thing off, get the lop it off of me, you know, procedure.

So, I mean, I mean, that's literally how he talks about the legalists. But oftentimes, because when we hear God's law, we sit there and go, that's true, that's right. You're right. Homosexuality is a sin.

Adultery is a sin. Stealing is a sin. They're speaking the truth. They're only speaking part of the truth, and they're preaching the law as if the solution is try harder or as if the law can somehow give you the ability to obey it.

Both, both of these are opposite sides of the exact same coin. Now, that being case, the text then talked about coveting. I wouldn't have known what coveting was. The commandment came and all of a sudden I was coveting everything.

I've been coveting everything ever since I could watch commercials, you know, because that's what it breeds in us. And I want you to consider this also, something to consider. Much of what has become our observance of Christmas is literally inculcating in our children really bad coveting, because it's not about Christ, it's about what do you want for Christmas?

Sometimes that can, you know, a good gift with the wrong spin can get us into a really bad spot. Keep that in mind. All right, another text I would like you to take a look at, and that is James chapter.

Four.

Yes, we Lutherans embrace the book of James. I know some people, what? Mind blown. James is a great book. Don't quote it out of context. Be very careful if you're doing that. We're going to look at a section of James chapter four and James writing to Christians.

Here's what he says. What causes quarrels? What causes fights among you? Who's the you there? Christians. Now, I'm important to note this. The epistle of James is part of a small body of works within the New Testament known as the Catholic epistles.

Catholic, small C, they weren't written to a specific congregation. They were written to the universal church, all Christians of all times and in all places. This is a Catholic epistle, Catholic, small C, universal.

And so he asks us, what causes quarrels and fights among you? Now, can anyone honestly say that there's never been any quarrels or fights here at Kongsvinger? Okay, enough said, well, let's move on. But you get the point.

So is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? Doesn't that sound like what it's like to be a Christian? You desire and you don't have, so you murder. You covet and you cannot obtain, so you fight and you quarrel.

You do not have because you do not ask. And so I can honestly say that your pastor has this problem, but I can honestly also say that I've, almost four years I've been here, I can see that we all together still wrestle with our sinful passions and that there are at times quarreling among us.

And we must recognize that this comes from our sinful nature. Well, this is what we have to recognize. So then the question then comes up, how do we fear and love God in keeping the ninth and the 10 commandments?

Well, first we fear and love God by not coveting the gifts that he has given to our neighbor. This would include, and I hate it, it seems so basic, not plotting to acquire our neighbor's stuff in a way that appears only proper or legal.

I would read out like Isaiah 5, 8, woe to those who join house to house, field to field until there is no more room. This is talking about a practice that was going on in ancient Israel, where rather than recognizing that individual families had land inheritances that were given to them by God when they came into the land and they were passed down from generation to generation, that was behind what was going on with Naboth and his vineyard.

Instead, there was this kind of scheming of kind of joining things together and creating these ginormous estates. This was a form of theft, but done under a pretense of that it was legal. And God spoke out against this and said, woe to those who do this.

Micah chapter two, verses one through two says, woe to those who divide, devise wickedness and work evil on their beds. Now think about this for a second. There you are. It's morning time. The sun has come up and it's just kind of getting a sliver right there in the window.

And there you are in your bed in that little warm spot. And just to the right and to the left of you are the cool parts of the sheet. And you know, it's just blissful. The windows open. It's not hot yet.

And you can hear the birds singing and maybe a bee buzzes by your window. And it's this beautiful, serene picture. But inside of your mind, the only thing you're thinking about is how you're going to sin that day.

Does anyone see the problem with this picture? But here's the thing. We've all done this. We've all done this. Where the only thing that's going on in your mind is how I'm going to get back at that person or how I'm going to take my favorite sin and I'm going to just go hog wild with it.

So the serene, beautiful picture of morning bliss inside of your heart, head and your heart, it's all black, dark, sin, muck. And oftentimes you're working out, okay, if I do this thing and I say this, then that person's going to, oh, they're really going to get it.

And as absurd as that sounds, who of us has not devised evil in our beds in the morning in that same way?

We have.

We are snakebit. Going to keep using that phrase for a while today. Let's consider, we mentioned this in passing last week. Let's read it out this week. Let's consider it like the ultimate example in scripture of coveting and how that went.

Second Samuel chapter 11. Second 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 of Israel, and they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah, but David remained at Jerusalem.

So this is David midlife, if you would, maybe a little older than midlife, maybe in his forties, maybe in his early fifties, who knows? But he's getting up there. His sword swinging isn't what it used to be.

And, you know, he's, he doesn't quite have the spring in his step that he did when he was younger. And so the council went something like this, you know, David, you're kind of getting up there in years.

You're not a spring chicken anymore. It's time for you to maybe stay back. Let us go and fight the battles and we'll just, we'll send you reports.

Hey, okay. Hey, okay.

That's, that's fine. So it happened one late afternoon. I love how the story says that it happened one late afternoon. When David arose from his couch, was walking on the roof of the king's house, kind of thinking kingly things.

And, you know, maybe doing this with his kingly beard and there he is. He's up and he looks down and whoa, whoa, from the roof, he saw a woman bathing. Why was this woman bathing there? 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 and the wife of Uriah the Hittite? Now at this point, the story should end and say, Oh, she's married.

I'm married. Yeah, that's the, that's the end of the story. Ah, but not so. So David sent messengers and listen to the word took her. Doesn't say invite, took her. And well, she came to him, not like she had much of a choice.

And he lay with her. Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness. So then she returned to her house. The woman conceived and she sent and told David, I am pregnant. Some scholars have wondered based upon the way the verbs work in this, if this was not a sexually abusive relationship.

If Bathsheba were living today and she was on Twitter, would she be hashtagging me too? I think there's a real case to be made that that's what's going on here. Not just with the took her bit, but after her husband is murdered, she mourns his death.

And the one thing we know at this point is, is that this is not a relationship of equals. She's a commoner. He's the king. He took her and she, there was no way for her to say no to any of this. So the chances of this actually being of a sexually abusive, aggressive, predatory act on the part of David really high.

It's definitely within the realm of possibility as a right interpretation and understanding of this text. That's what we're talking about here. He sees her, covets her. He takes her and he takes all of her.

And now she's in a pickle. She's conceived and Jewish law would demand as her, as an adulterous, the punishment for this is the death penalty. So now she sends to David, I'm pregnant. And that's her way of saying, you got to step in because you, you, you, you, this baby's daddy.

And I could literally be stoned for this. That's what's going on. So she sent word. I am pregnant. No repentance on the part of David at this point. So David sent word to Joab, send me Uriah the Hittite.

He's going to spring into action, use his kingly authority, pull some strings. We'll make it so that Uriah gets a little R &R, gets a, maybe a five day pass from the army. And you know what soldiers do when they get a little bit of R &R and they're in town.

He's going to go spend time with his wife.

Sure.

She'll give birth eight months later, but you know, who's counting? She, he happened to be gone for a while. So when Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab was doing, how the people were doing. How's the war going?

It seems like strange, small talk, doesn't it? You know, oh, the war is going great. So then David said to Uriah, go down to your house, wash your feet. 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, did not go down to his house. When they told David, Uriah did not go down to his house. Uriah said, David said to Uriah, have you not come from a journey?

Why do you not go down to your house? Uriah said to David, the ark in 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 and eat and drink and lie with my wife as you live?

And as your soul lives, I will not do this thing. Oh, this guy has some pretty good character. He won't allow himself to enjoy stuff that his brothers in arms are not enjoying at the moment. True camaraderie with the other soldiers.

So David said, Uriah, all right, remain here today and tomorrow I'll send you back. So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. How long can this guy not want to be with his wife? So David invited him and he ate at his presence and he 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. Well, that didn't work. So in the morning, David wrote a letter to Joab, sent it by the hand of Uriah.

I want you to consider just how sick this is. David has summoned Uriah. He has written out Uriah's death sentence, rolled it up, put it in its container, gave it to Uriah and said, give this to Joab. The entire time Uriah is traveling back, he's carrying the orders for his own murder.

I don't think it gets more premeditated than that. That's how sick and twisted this story is. I mean, this is a political scandal of scandals. Name me one president of the United States who, if found guilty of doing this, would still be the president.

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

It's the perfect murder because when there's war going on, people die. There's no crime scene. There's no murder weapon. It's the perfect crime. And the only person who knows of what really happened is Joab, and Joab and him are tight.

Joab's not going to rat him out. There's a God in Israel. So as Joab was besieging the city, he assigned Uriah to the place where he knew there were valiant men. And the men in the city came out and fought with Joab.

Some of the servants of David among the people fell. Uriah the Hittite also died.

It's tidy.

There's no evidence. And now David can marry the widow of Uriah the Hittite and look like a hero. Joab sat and told David all the news about the fighting. He instructed the messenger, when you have finished telling all the news about the fighting to the king, and if the king's anger arises, if he says to you, why did you go so near the city to fight?