Deep Sin, Deeper Grace
2 Samuel 11-12
In late May 2010, when the Tropical Storm Agatha had finally finished pummeling Guatemala, a 330-foot-deep sinkhole opened in downtown Guatemala City. That’s a deep sink hole. 330 feet. That’s almost 31 stories. That’s almost – not quite but almost – two Grand Traverse Resorts, one on top of the other. The resort is 17 stories, so two, one on top of the other, would be 34 stories. The sinkhole in Guatemala City was almost between 30 and 31 stories. That’s a deep, deep hole in the ground. And like all sinkholes, this one caused the ground to collapse suddenly; but in this case it also sucked land, electricity polls, a three-story factory building, and even a security guard into its deadly pit. The government was also working with 300 neighbors of the sinkhole whose lives and homes were endangered.
In the United States, sink holes are most common in Florida, Texas, Alabama, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania. The ground beneath these states is rich in easily-dissolved rock types. When enough water seeps into these formations, they collapse, creating the large crater known as a sinkhole. Land that looked stable and strong on the surface suddenly collapses, often producing havoc for anyone who lives near the sinkhole.
Cars can be parked on a street day after day, and everything appears normal, then one day the asphalt caves in and cars disappear into a gigantic hole.
Everybody says, “That hole came out of nowhere.” But they’re wrong. The hole appears suddenly but the process that led to it has gone on for many years. The underground erosion was invisible, but it was there all along.[i]
Today, as we continue our journey through the life of King David in the Old Testament books of 1 and 2 Samuel, we find David plummeting into a sinkhole that threatened everything he valued, and making decisions that would have lasting consequences for both David and his family, in spite of God’s blessing on his life and the future of his family. Turn with me to 2 Samuel 11.
When we think about David, two stories immediately come to mind, even with people who wouldn’t call themselves Christians: his encounter with Goliath, and his encounter with Bathsheba. The first was perhaps his greatest victory, the second his greatest defeat. Let’s start by looking at 2 Samuel 11:1-5.
This passage starts out looking like just another account of another victory for David. Ho hum. We get it. David wins again. “David sent Joab, AND his best soldiers, AND all of the fighting men, AND they kicked the Ammonites butts.” The Ammonites had started this fight the previous year, but during the rainy season, both sides hunkered down because moving the supplies that provisioned a fighting force was difficult during the rainy season. AND they had now laid siege to the Ammonite city of Rabbah. All of those “ands” are designed to lull us to sleep. Just another tale of military victory for David.
Until the relentless succession of “ands” is replaced by the word “but.” “But David remained at Jerusalem.” David has gone from being an active and engaged player in his life to being inactive, disengaged, complacent. This is the time of year when “kings go out to battle,” after the rainy season, either raiding nearby vulnerable cities or picking up hostilities from the previous year. Kings go out to battle. But David doesn’t. Oh, his men go. His servants go. His military leader Joab goes. All the fighting men of Israel go. But David doesn’t. He stays behind. He isn’t out with his men as other kings were. He was back in Jerusalem, in the comfort and security of his palace.
How often do we do that? When life gets a little bumpy, we run to God for comfort, for strength, for protection, for guidance. Why? Because God DOES give peace and comfort and guidance. In Psalm 57:1, David himself proclaimed “Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by.” How comforting it is to know that when life is hard, and the way isn’t smooth, and we’re hurting and confused and lost, we can run to our Heavenly Father who loves us and who wants what’s best for us and find comfort and peace and healing and hope.
The problem is that when life is good again, when the storms have passed, we no longer feel like we need God and we think we can put him back on the shelf until we need him again. I mean, I’ve been a pastor for almost 3 decades and a therapist for 1. Now, I’m not saying that people don’t schedule an appointment with their pastor or therapist just to check in and let them know how good life is right now so that we can kind of celebrate with you. I’m not saying that doesn’t happen. I’m just saying that it’s, like, never happened to me. People don’t feel the need to talk with their pastor when life is good. Just when it’s falling apart. Why would we think we would treat God any different than we do his shepherds here on earth?
So David’s has gone passive. He’s comfortable, and he wants to maintain that comfort. And that’s when he steps over the edge and into the sinkhole. Late in the afternoon one day, the Bible says he “arose from his couch.” What do we do on a couch? Lot’s of things, maybe, but exercise isn’t one of them. We aren’t typically very active when we’re on our couch, are we? So he’s passive, lazing the day away. And he gets up and goes up to the palace roof to stretch his legs and get a little fresh air, when he notices a woman bathing. Now, we aren’t saying that sitting on a couch or resting are wrong. Sabbath rest, physical and emotional rest, is God’s gift to us. But David has gone far beyond that here. He’s shirking his duty as king to be leading his troops.
The Bible clearly states that it was David walking on the roof of the palace. A vantage point from which he could see into the walled, protected courtyards of homes. And Bathsheba was the wife of one of what the Bible calls David’s “mighty men.” His personal guard and Seal Team Six. And she was the daughter of another. Both her husband and her father would have been well paid, well provided for, and would have had nice homes adjacent to the palace, the kind of homes that have things like interior courtyards where things like bathing could take place.
Bathsheba is completely innocent in this text. In fact, she’s completely inactive. These are things that happened to her, not things she did. The only thing she actively did was take a bath. And it wasn’t just any bath. It was the bath of ritual cleansing all Israelite women were supposed to do after their menstrual cycle. She was, if anything, a godly, obedient woman of God. David saw her, he noticed her beauty, he inquired about her, he sent for her and had her brought to him, where he slept with her. She is passive. The emphasis is completely and totally on David’s actions here. We cannot blame Bathsheba.
Oh, the irony though. David, the supposed godly new king of Israel, the one who would right the ship after Saul’s disastrous reign, lusts after, pursues, and takes a godly woman who just so happens to be the daughter of one of his royal guard and the wife of another. Bathsheba is purifying herself according to the law. Her father and husband are out fighting David’s war. And David is at home doing nothing. He isn’t resting. He’s passive.
Until a month or so later, when he gets word from Bathsheba that she’s pregnant. And the Bible makes it very clear who the father is. Her husband is at war, and Bathsheba was cleansing herself from her menstrual cycle when David caught sight of her. Already pregnant women don’t have their menstrual cycle. There is absolutely no chance that this pregnancy was the result of her and Uriah’s love before he went to war. No, this is David’s doing. He cannot avoid the fall out.
Now, David could have repented and turned things around right here, but he didn’t. The sinkhole kept getting deeper. Right now, he’s guilty of covetousness and adultery. Don’t worry though. He’s just getting started. That’s what we do, isn’t it. We realize we messed up, but instead of admitting it right there and making things right, we try to cover it up so that we can save face. Why? Because our hearts are hard. We resist the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives. Look at Vv. 6-13.
David calls Uriah home from battle under the guise of getting an update on how things are going with the siege of Rabbah. He then sends him home to “rest” before heading back to join his unit. He’s assuming, of course, that Uriah, who’s been away for a while, will go home and sleep with his wife. But Uriah doesn’t do that. He slept in the doorway of the royal palace instead. He wasn’t going to sleep in a bed with his wife while his unit, the men he fought beside, were in harms way and sleeping in tents on the ground.
So David keeps Uriah around for another day and eats and drinks with him, getting him excessively full and drunk. But still, Uriah would not go sleep at home. Soldiers on active duty were required to abstain from sexual relations with their wives. Uriah isn’t even an Israelite. He’s a Hittite who has converted to Judaism, likely fighting alongside David when he was fleeing from Saul all those years, and he’s become one of David’s most trusted soldiers – part of a group known as David’s mighty men. They were his body guards and the most elite unit in the Israelite army. Uriah, a foreigner shuns even minor infractions of the law. Uriah drunk is more righteous than David sober.
When his efforts at cover up failed, David, again, could have repented. But he didn’t. He’s scrambling now. He’s desperate. And when we’re desperate, we’re dangerous. Look at Vv. 14-24.
Now David has gone from adultery to murder. He sends Uriah back to battle with a dispatch for Joab, general of Israel’s army, in authority in David’s place. And he tells Joab to set Uriah up to be killed in battle. David thinks if he falls in battle, it won’t be murder, even if the situation in which he is killed is arranged. And Uriah faithfully but unknowingly carried his own death warrant back to Joab, who does as David wishes. And Uriah, who has done absolutely nothing wrong, who is one of David’s bodyguards, dies in battle.
David is now free to bring Bathsheba into his house and, after the prescribed period of mourning, take her as his wife. It would appear that David’s coverup has succeeded. And he comes out smelling like a rose. He, in his generosity, has taken Uriah’s widow as a wife so that she will be provided for. We, of course, know the truth – that David has arranged the whole thing. We aren’t told what Bathsheba thought about all of this. Yes, she became a queen, but she also had no say in the matter. She only spoke one short sentence in the entire episode. If you were the actress in a play about this, you would have exactly one line to learn – two words in Hebrew, three in English: “I am pregnant.” And you don’t even speak them to David. You send a messenger to tell him.
We aren’t told what Joab, commander of Israel’s army, thinks about all of this. We aren’t told what Uriah thought about being commanded to leave his unit and go home to Jerusalem. We’re told only that he refused to enter his own home while his friends were deployed. Bathsheba, Uriah, and Joab are all pawns in David’s sin – an episode that started with passivity and a look and snowballed to coveting one of his body guards’ wives, committing adultery with her, and then murdering her husband.
No, David didn’t wield the sword or shoot the arrow that dropped Uriah. An Ammonite did. But human rationalization will not work here. David is responsible for it all. Now, it would be easy here to see this as an injunction to focus on the rules of religion so that we don’t mess up. That leads to legalism, and that isn’t the point of the story at all. The point of the story is that sin has a way of snowballing on us, making us more and more desperate to save face as things unravel and we try to save face.
You see, at it’s core, sin is simply me wanting to take control of my life away from God. Sin is me spitting in God’s face and saying, “I, not you, am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul. And I’m going to do it my way.” Sin is me saying “I am God, and God is not. I am in control.” We may never say those words. We can sit here an look at David and say, “I would never do that. I would never go that far.” But David didn’t start out thinking he was going to murder Uriah. How did it start?
It started with passivity. Not rest. Passivity. And Passivity led to a look. And a look became a leer. And that leer became lust. David wanted her. And lust became adultery. David took her. And adultery led to deceit, and then, when deceit didn’t work, to murder. At any one of those points along the way, David could have repented and turned aside. But he didn’t. That’s what happens with sin. It’s like water – it just keeps flowing. It’s the current of life in this world. Repentance is the act of resistance that allows us to latch on to Christ as he pulls us from the rolling river.
So David thinks he’s succeeded in covering everything up. Uriah is dead. Bathsheba is his wife. It even looks to the masses like David, in a grand act of charity, has taken on Uriah, the fallen hero’s, wife and son to provide for them. But David is about to be given a choice that will define the rest of his rule and impact his legacy. He’s about to be confronted, as we all are, with his sin, by God. Look at Vv. 26-12:15.
God sends Nathan to confront David. But as is so often necessary when we are too far down the sin path, he has to come in from a side door to do it. He tells David a story. A story David thinks is about someone else. And when David in anger has pronounced judgment on the man in the story, the words “You are the man!” ring through the throne room.
God has given David exit ramp after exit ramp all along the way. Points at which he could repent and receive forgiveness. Bathsheba was one of his friends’ wives. Certainly that would stop David. But David ignored it. It took a lot of effort to get Bathsheba to come to him. That could have stopped him. But it didn’t. Then she got pregnant. He could have repented there, but he didn’t. His two attempts to deceive Uriah into laying with his wife didn’t work. Even drunk Uriah wouldn’t go home. That should have been a wake-up call to David, but he didn’t answer. And now an innocent man is dead, his wife stolen from him, and Joab has been wrapped up in this too.
Do you see it? God’s grace permeating this incident, offering an out every step of the way. This is a story about deep sin, and deeper grace. I wonder if St. Paul had this story in mind when he wrote the words we find in Romans 5:20-21. “Now the law came in to increase the trespass, (being told “no” often makes us want to do something even more) but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” Deep sin. Deeper grace.
Nathan is standing before David, pointing his finger in David’s face, his words “You are the man!” still echoing in the chamber. Even after committing murder, David is given another exit ramp. Will he repent, or will his heart remain hardened? He repents. “I have sinned against the LORD.” Those words weren’t just uttered to shut Nathan up, as Saul often did when confronted by Samuel, Nathan’s predecessor. David doesn’t try to negotiate with God, or compromise with God. He didn’t say, “I have sinned against the LORD, now let me save face.” He simply said, “I have sinned against the LORD.” And had barely uttered those words when Nathan said, “The LORD also has put away your sin.”
Oh, there were consequences. Sin always has consequences in this world, and repentance doesn’t always take them away. Lost jobs, broken relationships, marriage counseling, jail time may all still happen. But the righteous punishment for sin – death, separation from God – is taken away. Jesus experienced it so that we don’t have to. The son David conceived with Bathsheba died soon after birth. But another son of David, whose mother was Bathsheba, Solomon, would follow in his father’s footsteps as Israel’s king and would even surpass his father not in military prowess but in civil administration as Israel grew and prospered during his reign. Deep sin, deeper grace.
David’s own son by another wife, Absalom, would revolt and try to steal David’s throne before he could pass it on to Solomon. He would chase David from Jerusalem, lie with David’s wives and concubines on the same royal palace roof where David first caught sight of Bathsheba, for all the nation to witness. David stole Uriah’s wife pretty much in private. David’s wives were sullied in front of everyone. And that son, Absalom, would die in his rebellion. But God’s promise of David’s eternal throne would remain as Matthew traced the lineage of Jesus back through the centuries to David, AND BATHSHEBA. Look at Matthew 1:6. Matthew is tracing the lineage of Jesus starting with Abraham, and he’s gone through 14 generations when he says, “And Jesse the father of David the king. And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, and Solomon the father of Rehoboam …” and he continues tracing the lineage until he says “and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ” (Matt. 1:6, 16). The lamb who takes away the sin of the world would count David and Bathsheba among his earthly grandparents. How ironic. Deep sin. Deeper grace.
I don’t know how deep the sin is in your life. I don’t know how many exit ramps you’ve passed up, how many opportunities to repent you’ve ignored. But I DO know that God is offering you and I another one here today. So as we close the service singing a couple more songs, the altar is open. You can come up here and pray. You can stand. You can sit. You can kneel. But I’m inviting you to come, if you need to, to pray. It doesn’t matter why, or of what. Just come. Take advantage of God’s offer of grace.
Even if you’ve already given your life to Christ. David was a faithful servant of God. He didn’t lose that standing when he sinned. But a lot of damage and chaos could have been avoided had he heeded the voice of God calling out to him sooner. Set aside your pride. Set aside your ego. And come. I’ll anoint you with oil in the shape of the cross on your forehead and pray God’s blessing over you. But that’s it. This is a moment between you and God. Will you take it? Deep sin. Deeper grace. Let’s pray.
[i] Randy Alcorn; “The Cumulative Effect of Our Little Choices,” EPM Blog, (5-8-17)
