I don’t like being treated like an object. I imagine that you don’t like being treated like an object. Even an object of desire is an object.
Bathsheba was treated as an object of desire in this story. Grammatically speaking, Bathsheba is the object of David’s verbs. “David sent someone to find out about her.” “David sent messengers to get her.” “David slept with her.” “After her time of mourning was over, David had her brought into his house.” Bathsheba only speaks three words in this whole story, “I am pregnant.”
Bathsheba wasn’t created to be an object. She was a person. David didn’t just sin; he sinned against Bathsheba. David didn’t just kill a man. He killed a husband, the husband of Bathsheba. This is the story of David and Bathsheba. She was more than an object of David’s verbs and as we will see that makes David’s verbs all the worse.
We usually focus on David in this story and that is one proper focus –Scripture lets us inside his head–but David isn’t the only focus. This is also a story about Bathsheba. Matthew includes her in Jesus’ genealogy. Matthew considers her part of the story of Christmas.
God used even David’s sin against Bathsheba to bring about Christmas. God brought something very good out of something very bad. That is the claim of this sermon: God can bring something very good out of something very bad.
We will see this in two points. First: the cover up. Second: the conviction. We see the cover up in 2 Samuel 11. We see the conviction in 2 Samuel 12:1-13.
First, let’s see the cover up. The story begins in the spring, which the author tells us is when kings go off to war. David had a specific war planned. The previous year, the king of Ammon had died. He had been friendly to David and so David sent envoys to express his sympathy to his son. The late king’s son thought these envoys were spies, so he publicly humiliated them. He then hired thousands of Aramean soldiers to fight Israel. David’s general Joab destroyed these Arameans and now this spring, it was time to pay the king of Ammon a visit.
David sent Joab to the front while he stayed at the palace. This wasn’t necessarily dereliction of duty. David may have been listening to his trusted advisers who did beg him not to throw himself into the thick of every battle.
One evening David was on the roof. The palace would of course, have a higher roof than most. Because of the cool breezes the roof was the best place to be on a hot Jerusalem night. David saw a woman bathing. There was no indoor plumbing in those days and so people regularly bathed in their courtyards.
Now David didn’t just notice this woman bathing; he fixated on her. “David sent someone to find out about her,” the author tells us. David was already committing adultery with her in his heart. Something about her pleased him and not in a wholesome way.
I think many of us know what that is like. My guess is that some of our Google and Facebook searches are not as innocent as we would like to pretend. We type that name because something about that person pleases us and not in an entirely wholesome way.
David did a search on this bathing beauty. His messenger told him that she was, “Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” Bathsheba’s relations might not mean much to us, but they meant something to David. This information told David that she was the daughter of one of his best fighters. She was the granddaughter of one of his most trusted advisors and she was the wife of a man in his inner circle, his mighty men. This woman was off limits ten thousand times over.
David’s response here is such a perfect picture of how temptation works. His mind lingered on Bathsheba and he wanted to know more. What he found out should have stopped him, but it didn’t. David’s train had already left the station before he asked. He didn’t ask for information about her to help him make a decision about what to do. He asked because it pleased him and not in a wholesome way. That’s usually how temptation works. We are hooked long before we’re jerked.
David’s lust made the truth about Bathsheba seem irrelevant. Eve’s desire made God’s commandment about that fruit seem irrelevant. Sin makes truth seem irrelevant.
We call this story ‘David and Bathsheba’ but perhaps we should call it ‘What David did to Bathsheba.’ I don’t see much back and forth flirting here. I certainly don’t see Bathsheba as a seductress. Such women certainly are in the Bible, but Bathsheba doesn’t seem to be one of them. Here’s what we read in the Bible, “David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her.”
David was the king. He was an imposing and respected figure and his requests were not easily refused. It would be difficult to hold him accountable. Who could hold the king accountable? Bethsheba’s husband Uriah? David could, and in fact did, have him killed. It seems that David used his prestige and power to pressure this young woman.
Bathsheba’s three words, “I am pregnant,” drive the rest of the chapter. David didn’t kill Uriah because he wanted his wife. David had already enjoyed Uriah’s wife. David killed Uriah because Bathsheba was pregnant.
Now if Uriah would lay with his wife, all David’s problems would be over. Nine months later the baby would be born; David would buy a gift, slap Uriah on the back and say, ‘congratulations,’ and no one would be the wiser. Such are the lies we spin for ourselves.
David recalled Uriah from the front and told him to go home. “Go down to your house and wash your feet.” David wasn’t worried about the cleanliness of Uriah’s feet. David was urging him to lay with his wife. David even sent a romance package to Uriah’s house. “Uriah left the palace, and a gift from the king was sent after him.” That’s kind of sick. Covering up sin often leads to sick deeds.
Ironically, it was David’s earlier righteousness that threw a wrench in his plans. David had a rule that when battle was afoot, his men abstained from intimacy. As David earlier explained to the priest at Nob, “women have been kept from us, as usual whenever I set out.”
David must have cursed his earlier righteousness. ‘Just break my rule this one time, man.’ Sin makes us do that. Sin doesn’t just reach its tentacles into the future. Sin also guts the past. Your past righteousness can come back to confront you.
Uriah refused David’s offer. “As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing.” Uriah was honoring David. I can’t imagine David felt honored. I imagine David cursed this loyalty. That’s what getting yourself wrapped up in sin will do to you. You will wind up cursing attempts to do you good. Trying to cover up your sin will make you think and do the topsy-turviest of things. If you are in this web right now, confess and repent before the web gets even stronger.
When there was no reasonable way to convince Uriah that the coming baby would be his, David ordered his death. Uriah returned to the front holding his own sealed death sentence. It would look like an attack gone wrong.
The general Joab, probably full of questions, ordered this doomed attack and Uriah, as well as many other soldiers—sons, husbands, fathers—were killed in action. “When Uriah’s wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him. After the time of mourning was over, David had her brought to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son.”
Now, David’s marriage to Bathsheba may have looked magnanimous to the people. Uriah was a Hittite, a foreigner, and so there was no kinsman-redeemer nearby and we’ve seen how important those were for widows. David might have looked like he was caring for a widow in her distress.
David might have fooled the people. He didn’t fool the Lord. “But the thing David had done displeased the Lord.” Even if you distract your conscience momentarily, you can’t distract the Lord.
The Lord confronted David. That’s our second point: the conviction. Putting together the timeline, it seems that the prophet Nathan came after David and Bathsheba’s baby was born. That meant that David had every reason to think he had gotten away with it.
Nathan came with a case for the king. As the final legal authority in Israel, David often arbitrated conflicts like this. David didn’t know that this case was a parable.
This parable was about a rich man killing the poor man’s lamb. Bathsheba, not Uriah, was the slaughtered lamb. Nathan described her this way, “it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.” David had everything except Bathsheba and he took her too. God hadn’t forgotten about Bathsheba. Nathan’s parable doesn’t forget about Bathsheba.
David was outraged by what Nathan told him. David didn’t lack a moral compass. He had just turned it off when it came to himself. That’s how it works. The man in the gall of sin can see that his actions are heinous when he ascribes them to someone else. He just won’t see that his actions are heinous because he is the one doing them.
David knew right from wrong, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die,” Nathan held up the mirror to David, ‘You are that man.’ Nathan recalled all of God’s kindnesses to David and they were many. “I gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more.”
The great lie of sin is that God doesn’t want you to be happy. The great lie of sin is that God can’t or won’t satisfy you. That’s what Eve assumed in the garden. That’s what David assumed on his palace roof. That’s not reality. This was reality, “And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more.” God knows how to satisfy. If you don’t believe that, you are standing on very dangerous spiritual ground this morning.
There would be consequences for David’s sin. There are consequences for my sin. Some of these consequences are obvious. Some sins have legal consequences. Some have health consequences. Many have relational consequences.
David’s sin had consequences for himself and his family. He was told that the sword would never depart from his family. In the next chapter, David’s son Absalom killed his brother Amnon. Was Absalom responsible for what he did? Of course, but God wanted David to recognize that it was also a consequence of his own sin. David was told that a member of his own family would bring calamity on him and try and take the throne and that happened too. Was Absalom responsible for this rebellion? Of course, and he died for his own sins, not for David’s. But God wanted David to recognize that this too was a consequence of his own sin. As David fled from Absalom, he acknowledged God’s hand in this matter. Perhaps this is part of what lay behind his tears. “O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you!” We moderns are too quick to dismiss the consequences of sin.
The comforting news is that if you trust God, if you turn from your sin, these consequences become discipline rather than condemnatory, and this discipline is for your good. “We have all had human fathers who disciplined us,” says Hebrews, “They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in His holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”
David, to his eternal benefit, received the rebuke and the discipline. He confessed, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nathan offered God’s forgiveness, “The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die.”
We usually put ourselves in David’s place here and delight in this forgiveness. There is something very proper about that, but for the moment I want you to put yourself in Bathsheba’s place. Does that make it all go away? David says, “I have sinned against the Lord,” and the prophet replies, “The Lord has taken away your sin.” Does that bring your husband back? Put yourself in the place of the mother of one of those unnamed soldiers who died alongside Uriah. Does David’s confession bring your son back? David confessed, and God forgave what he did to you. How could you keep worshipping such a God with integrity?
The apostle Paul wrestled with this issue in his letter to the Romans. He explained how God could forgive a sin like David’s and still be worthy of worship in the eyes of someone like Bathsheba. Paul explained, “God presented Christ as a sacrifice… He did this to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— He did it to demonstrate His righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”
Christ’s cross is the resolution. David’s sins deserved death. Nathan had told David, “The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die.” Someone would die for that sin. Christ would die for David’s sins. The heavenly Father was rightly wrathful that one of his children had killed another. He was rightly wrathful that one of his children had taken advantage of another. Someone would suffer hell for what David did to that young woman. That’s justice. God decided that this someone would be Himself. That’s mercy.
That mercy came through the line of David and Bathsheba. Their first child died. We don’t have time to deal adequately with that weighty story this morning. The story proceeds to show that David did care for Bathsheba. He certainly sinned against her grievously, but he also cared for her. Don’t paint David as a two-dimensional monster. That does a disservice to what the Bible tells us about him. David, like Bathsheba, was more than a character. He was a person with vices and virtues intermingled.
David and Bathsheba had another child named Jedidiah, whose name means “loved by the Lord.” That’s the first sign that God was bringing something good out of David’s sin and Bathsheba’s sorrow. We know Jedidiah better as Solomon.
Solomon’s birth is part of the Christmas story; “David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife.” When Matthew wrote about Christmas, he included Bathsheba. The sin against her was not the final word in her story.
Sin does not get the final word in the family of God. God’s plan does. “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” That doesn’t excuse what David did, but it does help us see how God can use all things.
I don’t know what you have gone through. I do know that God is able to do remarkable things through what we suffer. He did it in this story.
He did it at Christmas. That baby laid in the manger would be sinned against grievously too. “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain… He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.”
He too was slaughtered like that lamb in Nathan’s parable. If you are angered at how Jesus is treated in the gospels, if you are angry like David saying, “the man who did this deserves to die,” then know that Nathan’s word to David is the Spirit’s word to you, “you are the man.” “You are the woman.” “He was pierced for your transgressions, he was crushed for your iniquities; the punishment that brought you peace was on him, and by his wounds you are healed.”
The question for you now is, ‘have you responded like David—“I have sinned against the Lord”? Do you see that you are blameworthy for what happened to Jesus just as surely as David was blameworthy for what happened to Bathsheba?
You might be able to resonate with Bathsheba in a profound way in this story. I don’t know what you’ve been through. You must see, however, that you also resonate with David in this story. You are, in fact, responsible for what Jesus suffered. ‘You are the one.’
When sharing the gospel, many Christians like to say that if you were the only person on earth, Christ still would have suffered and died for you. That also means if you were the only person alive on earth, the guilt for your sin would be enough to send Jesus to the cross. You don’t need to look too far to find the perpetrator behind Jesus’ flogging and crucifixion.
“My Lord, what you did suffer was all for sinners’ gain; mine, mine was the transgression, but yours the deadly pain. So here I kneel, my Savior, for I deserve your place; look on me with your favor and save me by your grace.”
If that is your song, hear the good news spoken to you as Nathan spoke it to David, “The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die.”
If that isn’t your song, if you fear that not even the mercy of God could cover you, remember that it covered David. You might put David beyond the grace of God. God didn’t. You don’t get to decide the extent of God’s mercy. God does.
He’s more merciful than you might think. He even includes this story of manipulation and coercion and murder in the birth of his Son. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Is David and Bathsheba a story you would choose to enter? We want to sweep this under the rug. We want to make this go away. Christmas tells us that Jesus is very different from us in this regard. Do you know how different Jesus is from anyone else you have ever met? Do you know how different he is from you? If you know him, you love that difference. Amen.