The Story Chapter 12 - David's Sin

A man with the world at his feet, who’s conquered all around him, begins to grow bored and listless. He takes his eye off the ball. He’s so powerful he can have pretty much anything he wants and because nobody’s prepared to stand up to him, that’s exactly what he does. With disastrous consequences.

 

(Tiger Woods ad).

 

What you’ve just watched was an advertisement that Nike put out in the wake of Tiger Woods’ fall from grace a few years back. The truth about his serial infidelity came out, and the golden boy of world golf suddenly started to look very tarnished.

 

And the voice you hear in the background is that of Woods’ dead father; speaking with almost prescient precision into son’s situation.

 

“I want to find out what your thinking was. I want to find out what your feelings are. Did you learn anything”

 

We could well ask the same questions of David this morning. There weren’t many times that Israel’s finest King tarnished his record, but this is the daddy of them all. What was he thinking? What was he feeling? What did he learn, and what can we learn from him?

 

As I was reading the story this week, three phrases in the text stuck out for me, and they pretty much chart the trajectory of this episode in David’s life; and we’re going to look at each of them in turn this morning.

 

“In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the King’s men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.

 

And there’s the killer phrase. But David remained in Jerusalem. While the other kings were away with their men in battle, David had chosen to stay at home.

 

And we don’t know why; but there’s an uncharacteristic listlessness about David. Staying away from the fighting; getting up in the middle of the night to wander aimlessly round the palace roof.

 

What was he thinking? What was he feeling?

 

Well, we can only guess; but are these symptoms of a King who’s risen to every challenge he’s been faced with, so far; but now that everything’s going well, he’s beginning to get a little bored?

 

His armies are winning; he’s loved by the people; he has wives and children aplenty; he has the favour of his God. But something within him isn’t content and if you pushed him to say why, I don’t think he’d even be able to tell you.

 

He’s just listless.

 

And when you’re listless and bored, you tend to latch on the first thing that promises some relief, whatever or whoever that might be. Whether it’s something that’s life-giving or not.

 

And in that sense, very little has changed in the 3000 years between us and David.

 

Like most of Scotland’s cities, there are huge rates of drug and alcohol problems in this part of the world. In Glasgow and Edinburgh those problems often go hand in hand with poverty and unemployment. Up here, it’s well known that same issues affect those earning lots of money in the fishing industry or on the rigs. The common strand is listlessness. If you’re unemployed, you’re bored. If you’re not working for weeks at a time, you’re bored. Listlessness is the enemy.

 

Some people drink to fight their boredom, some go looking for real or virtual flesh to hold on to; some shop; some eat; some throw themselves so far into work that they never have a chance to get bored.

 

But it’s all evasion of one kind or another. Instead of facing whatever it is within us that’s not satisfied, we just keep feeding the hunger. But the hunger never goes away, and it turns us in on ourselves so we give little thought to the consequences for those around us.

 

Catching sight of the very beautiful but very married  Bathsheba as she bathed wasn’t David’s sin. It may not even have been his desire to have her. His sin was in the totally selfish way he acted on that desire with no thought for the consequences. Taking another man’s wife and then engineering his death, betraying his own wives and children, dishonouring his God and his position as King, all to slake a thirst that no woman, no matter how beautiful, could ever slake.

 

David’s listlessness wasn’t really about the flesh of another woman. It was about his own heart. We are made for union with God, and no human relationship, no matter how wonderful, can ever fill the space in our lives that God was meant to occupy.

 

But we don’t taste that full union with God on this side of eternity. For now, says Paul, we see through a glass darkly.  So there will always be spells in life when that incompleteness rankles; and in those times the temptation will always be to go looking for something that seems to promise better. Distraction, fulfilment, pleasure, a temporary escape from our emptiness.

 

So a key question this morning is where does your listlessness take you? Where do you go to alleviate your boredom? I’m not asking you to do this, but would you be able to turn to your neighbour and answer that question honestly this morning – or would the answers shame you?

 

If it’s the latter – then let that realisation speak to you this morning.

 

Our listlessness isn’t the sin – it’s what we do with it that matters.

We know all too well what David does with his. He sleeps with Bathsheba, then when she falls pregnant he tries to get her husband Uriah to sleep with her when he’s home on leave.

 

And when that fails, he takes desperate measures and engineers Uriah’s death in the heat of battle.

 

And for a spell, it looks like David’s got away with it. But God isn’t going to let this one slide.

 

He sends the prophet Nathan to David with a cock-and-bull story about a rich man stealing a poor man’s lamb to feed his visitors, and when David  expresses his outrage at this gross injustice, Nathan deals the hammer blow. “You are that man” he says.

 

All the lies, all the half-truths, all the self-justification that David had crafted to insulate himself with, swept away in just four words – You are that man.

 

We know what you’ve done. And make no mistake, it’s you who’ve done it.

 

Maybe David was playing those games we all play and trying to wriggle out of his responsibility for what had happened. Uriah? He died in battle – I didn’t kill him.

 

But Nathan won’t let him off the hook. “Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes? YOU struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. YOU killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now therefore, the sword will never depart from your house because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.”

 

The truth is out – and David can’t hide what he’s done any longer.

 

I’ve told you the story about how when I was a kid I stopped eating my packed lunches for a while and started dropping them down in the gap between our upright piano and the wall. If you haven’t heard that story, speak to me over coffee!

 

The part I remember most is hearing my mother shouting ‘Paul!’ and going upstairs to find her with two basins full of greaseproof paper packages holding mouldy lunches. In my child’s mind, I hadn’t realised what I was doing until that moment when the evidence was all spread out before me.

 

David’s experience would have been similar when Nathan came to expose his sin, but David  couldn’t plead the ignorance of a child. Suddenly his sin was uncovered when he thought it was so well hidden. The sin against Bathsheba, against Uriah, against the servants and soldiers who were the go-betweens and had to do the king’s will in these things; against his own wives and children; but ultimately against God – who’d placed David in this position of trust and had the right to expect better of him.

 

You are that man said the old prophet, his finger pointing in David’s face. And the truth is that we too are that man, that woman.

 

Paul reminds us in Roman that all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God. And John tells us that if we say we have not sinned, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

 

We’re told that Christ’s death was for the sins of the whole world; and by definition, that includes your sin and mine. We’re implicated. There’s blood on our hands.

 

It was our sin that took him to the cross; and the cross will only be meaningful for us when we accept that and begin to live our lives in response to it. When we own up to the ways in which we let God down, seek his forgiveness, and ask for his strength to live well and make better choices.

 

It was David’s willingness to do just that which set him apart from Saul.

 

Maybe some of you, as you’ve read the story, have been sitting there thinking – why did David get away with this, and Saul didn’t?

David broke about half of the ten commandments in one go here, including adultery and murder! Wasn’t that worse than what Saul did? How come David’s sin seems to have been passed over, but Sauls’ meant the end of his reign?

 

Well, for one thing, don’t forget that there were consequences for David too – ‘the sword will never depart from your house’ says Nathan, and the in-fighting with Absalom was only the beginning of the fulfilment of that word.

 

And of course, there was the tragedy of losing the son that Bathsheba had borne to him. A harsh judgment, but as we know in the Old Testament, it was an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a life for a life.

 

But what set David apart from Saul was his response to being confronted with his sin. He didn’t prevaricate, he didn’t try to explain it away. The last phrase that struck me this week was David’s humble confession to Nathan – “I have sinned against the Lord”.

 

When they’re caught in their sins, Saul rationalises – but David confesses. And in a few moments we’re going to sing together the words of David’s confession, as we find them in Psalm 51.

 

Earlier I quoted the apostle John who said “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” But that verse continues – “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

 

Saul took the former route, David the latter. And that’s why David, for all his faults, is still revered to this day.

 

When we take responsibility for our actions, own up to them and seek to change, God is faithful to his promise to love and forgive.

 

And the beautiful ending to this part of the story is that David and Bathsheba have another son, Solomon, who would go on to construct the magnificent temple for God that David had hoped to build. In his grace, once amends have been made, God works this episode into his plan; and when you look at the genealogy of Jesus, Bathsheba finds a place of honour as the mother of Solomon, from whom Jesus was descended.

 

We started this morning with the ghostly voice of Tiger Woods’ father asking him what he’d learned from his failings.

 

Well, we know what David learned from all of this, because towards the end of his life he spoke to his son and his people, and these are the words he left them with.

 

Solomon – may the Lord give you discretion and understanding when he puts you in command over Israel, so that you may keep the law of the Lord your God. Then you will have success, if you are careful to observe the decrees and laws that the Lord gave to Moses.

 

And to the people he said “Is not the Lord your God with you? Has he not granted you rest on every side? Now devote your heart and soul to seeking the Lord your God”.

 

Be careful, be discerning, keep the commandments, seek God with all of your heart.

 

Good advice, whichever era of the story you happen to be living in.