2 Samuel 11:6-27 Confession Or Cover-Up

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Transcript

David’s Downward Spiral Begins

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Well, this is the life of David. And we left David in a bad spot in win last week. He wasn't supposed to be there, was he? Um, while others were out in battle, he was home, sleeping, and looking and and uh falling, and you could probably say jumping headlong is a sin to sit with Bathsheba. And uh, of course, uh the two things that you usually think of with David, his victory with Goliath and his defeat with Bathsheba. And last week we saw this progression. He saw her, he took action there and inquired after her, and after God's gracious warning, is this not Dasheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah, the Hittite? Uh, we see in verse four there that he sent for her and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. So, this downward spiral of sin we see here, and how much enjoyment was received from that? Well, if it takes place all in the end of one verse. I think that's a good application for us. Um, passing pleasures of sin. It's not generally worth much, it's a little thing, a moment of passion. But then verse 5, the result we see here, and the woman conceived and sent and told David and said, I am with child. That's a blessing of a baby, right? That's a blessing. However, in this uh circumstance here, it's it's a difficulty for sure, because this baby would um make obvious David's sin of adultery. Deuteronomy 22, 22 said that the the penalty for adultery was death. Serious, death, and the baby here was an undeniable proof of this infidelity, and that's where we left him, and he's been brewing on it.

Confession Versus The Cover-Up

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Now, what comes next in this story often comes next because in our sin we're faced with two options. One, confession. Confession is what God's looking for us from us. It's best and it's right that we admit that we've messed up, become clean. It's not always easy, it takes humility and possibly great consequences. But confession is what's best. Well, the other option, aside from confession, is the cover-up. And that's usually where we go. It's the confession or the cover-up. But instinctively, like a reflex, a reflex, how about that? Like a reflex, we often go for the cover-up, right? And we see this in our life. Uh, when somebody points a rubber band at you, right? You ever have that? Somebody points a rubber band at you, and you think that they just pointed a gun at you, right? Because instinct is, hey, hey, hey, hey, right? The cover-up. When danger is there, we instinctively go to the cover-up. And it's more like the reflex, we get that from Adam, I think, right? There in the very beginning, Genesis chapter 3, Adam and Eve, once again, we could say, jumped into sin. Um, and there, immediately, when they knew that they were naked, uh, they sowed fig leaves to cover up their sin. That's just what we do. We try to cover it up. We make a story or an excuse uh rather than confess our sin. And David's no different, and he ventures out of his way

Uriah’s Integrity Exposes David

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to do it. Here we pick up in verse 6. Um, then David sent to Joab, saying, Send me Uriah the Hittite. And Joab sent Uriah to Galileo. When Uriah had come to him, David asked, How Joab was doing, and how the people were doing, and how the world prospered. And David said to Uriah, Go down to your house and wash your feet. So Uriah departed from the king's house, and a gift of food, a basket there from the king followed him. But Uriah slept at the door of the king's house with the servants of his lord, and he did not go down to his house. So here we see attempt one in the cover-up. Um, David sends for Uriah. Have him come home, Joab. Now, in 2 Samuel 23, we find out that Uriah was one of David's mighty men. He was in that inner circle. Uh, guys that David fought alongside and went to battle with, all these things. And all at once, strangely, David the king, is asking for Uriah to come home. Something important. Now, verse 7 shows how awkward this turned out to be, right? Uh Joab is saying, Then Uriah comes, yes, sir, I'm here. You called for me. Yeah, David says. Uh, hey, how's Joab doing? I just that's what I was kind of wondering was how's Joab doing? I mean, look at this. How's how's the battle going? How are the men doing? Everything going good? I just kind of wanted to know. That's why I called you here today. You called me all the way from the battle to ask how Joab was doing. And it's painful, uh small talk. But when it's all over in verse 8, he says, okay, great. We'll go ahead and take some leave. Go ahead and wash your feet. You know, this was told, go home and you know, you wash your feet like the disciples there. Jesus washed his disciples' feet before they ate. Oh, have a good meal. Go to bed. Why do you know? Hang out with your wife. Why don't you do that, Uriah? That's what you deserve. Please do that. Now, who's gonna argue with that? Go home, spend some time in comfort. But Uriah here does not. There's a conviction, Uriah understands. Well, if all the army is off in the field suffering, I can't go home and experience, you know, just the freedom of being at home. I'm not gonna do that. Now I wonder if this really got on David's nerves, right? Because the whole army was out in the field and David was home taking a nap. Uriah was out serving with the men, and David was hanging out with Uriah's wife, right? Um, you see the difference in integrity right now in their lives. Uriah does not know home because he's got more integrity than that. He's the kind of guy who won't lead in your troops. And so in verse 12, we see the cover-up continue.

Drunkenness Fails And Murder Follows

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Then David said to Uriah, wait here today and also end tomorrow, and I will let you depart. So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day in the neps. And David called him and gave and drank before him, and he made him drunk. And at evening he went out to lie upon his bed with the servants of his Lord, but he did not go home to his house. So attempt to take two. David's got a plan, I'll have Uriah over for dinner. Can't say no to the king, and we'll have something to drink. Then we'll have a little more to drink. We'll have a little more to drink, and I'm gonna wear this guy down where he won't even know what planet he's on. Like after God's own heart, right? I say that's what else to do. And but to cover it up, he's trying to put your life in a compromising situation, and yet it doesn't work. This guy has so much integrity that in his drunkenness he stumbles down to the bed there with the sermons and once again refuses to go home. Can you imagine the frustration in David at that point? What's with this guy? I'm only going home. Just go home and enjoy it. But Eliah has way too much integrity for that. And it's come to this in verse 14. In the morning, it happened, and this is where it gets dark, that David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Eli, and broke in the letter saying, Set Uriah and performance, the hottest battle, and retreat from him that he may be struck down and die. So it was, while Joab besieged the city, and he assigned the letter to a place where he knew there were valiant men. Then the men of the city came out and fought with John, and some of the people and the servants of David fell, and Uriah the Hittite died also. So couldn't get any lower than this? Uh David sends a letter to Uriah. Now, by this point, David knows that Uriah is a good guy, right? Because I don't know about you, but I'd be real tempted to check out that letter. If I have secret correspondence in my hand, I'm not working with the FBI or anything like that. You know, if I have secret correspondence like that, I'd be really tempted to look. But David trusts this guy enough. He says, Well, now I know by now Uriah's a good guy. He's a straight shooter, he's got some integrity. He would do everything out. And he sends Uriah with his only death one. Man, what did he become? And Joab hits the letter. I'm sure he's wondering. I don't know what Uriah did, but orders are orders, and he sets them there. And Uriah, this godly man, this man of integrity, he he dies during the battle. And this is all part of uh the temporar. Um now David perhaps is to the point where he says, Well, I got that to die, please. Well, at least I don't have that hanging over my head. But notice verse 26.

The “Solved” Sin That Displeases God

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When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah, her husband, was dead, she mourned for her husband. When her mourning was over, David sent and brought her to the house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done just didn't go. So we see here uh really part of the consequences in the subdued story, verse 26, she mourns. Now, was she complicit in this? I kind of think not. But either way, she mourns his day. And this was a professional expected cultural mourning of seven days, but I'm sure the consequences were betting for her. There was no faith. Um, and then David comes for Louis, and look at the hypocrisy, you know, as he's still trying to hug her his traps. David takes her his wife. Now, the Bible set up a way to provide for widows in those days. A little strange to us, but uh a man would take his brother's wife. If his brother died, uh, a man would take his brother's wife and raise up offspring in the name of uh the dead brother. So I think here David steps forward and goes, Oh, Uriah, you are like a brother to me. You are you are just so true and so honest. Uriah, I would take care of your family. And perhaps, I don't know, but perhaps everybody said, the king, he is such a great guy. The king stepped forward to take care of his family. What a guy, you know, and and yet we know the truth. The readers here know the truth as he steps forward as a hero. We know the truth because of what it says in verse 27. This thing displeased the Lord. This thing was sin, continuing sin, and it was a lie. And the cover-up seems to have worked or did it. Uh, time goes by, the baby is born, so we're looking at at least nine months, probably here, and David tries to move on. Um, the cover-up is still necessary. Isn't that the funny thing about cover-ups? The cover-up is is still necessary. And we're going slowly through this, so we're gonna hit chapter 12 and see the end result of this next time.

Psalm 32 And The Pain Of Silence

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But let's turn back to Psalm 32 once more. We went there last week, and uh we'll end there at the end of today. Psalm 32, a psalm written by David, not necessarily at this time, but most commentators feel that it was kind of a picture to what was going on in his heart. But look at verse one here then Psalm 32, verse one says this blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, blessed is the man to whom the Lord is not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. So this song starts out with the word bless. Now, there's a few psalms that start off with this word blessed. It means, oh, how happy. It's this idea of being totally fulfilled in your life. Blessed is man whose sin is forgiven, right? And and it reminds yourself Psalm 10. You know, blessed is men who walks not in the council of the ungodly, and and you know, and stands in the path of sinners and sits in the seat of the scornful, but his delights in the law of the Lord, and he meditates in it day and night. He's like a tree, we picture that. He's like a tree planted by rivers of water, bearing fruit. We go, ah, tree planted by rivers of water, bearing fruit, bless. And and and that idea is here, it's just a healthy place to be. Uh, it's just a joyful place to be, a peaceful place to be. But check it out. David is not blessed right now in our story, he's the opposite. This is before, right? It's it's the opposite of blessed. He's cursed in so many ways. He's feeling. Um, notice and says this about where he was at. Um blessed, verse 2, and the man whom he wants iniquity, in his spirit there is no deceit. At this point in David's life, he's living a life of deceit. Now, come back. This is all part of the cover-up, isn't it? A life of dishonesty. He's living a lie. Now, notice verse 3. He says, When I'm kept silent, my bones grew old through groaning all day long. At night, your hand was heavy upon you. I get that a little bit, I think, right? My bones, something about my bones at night. Between you know, winter and spring and Monday and Tuesday in Texas, you know, the weather changes, and your bones just ache inside. And you wake up in the middle of the night and I'm here doing this with my hands and like, you know, in the corner of the room bouncing around trying to get my bones to stop acting up, you know, and it just nags you, right? Oh, it just nags you. Oh good. I'm sorry. Um, okay, but you know, you just feel it, it's that constant nagging in your bones. And and and and look, look what he says to the deceit. And I kept silent. Let's think about that for a second. When you're in the midst of a cover-up, when you're covering up your sin, isn't silence like the best thing you can imagine? Because every time you open your mouth, there's a good chance people are gonna see the contradiction. And what'd you say? Where are you now? Oh, well, you know, hey, you know, let's come over here for a second. You don't want to talk about it. I don't want to open my mouth because I might blow my cover. And that's where David was at. Just constantly living with this guilt. He kept his mouth closed. Now, not only was he not talking to other people, lest it be um seen, but he wasn't talking to God. Right? Coming in his traps for at least nine months. He says it was rotten in my bones, a constant lagging. Can you imagine that? Of course you can. Living with secret sin, a contradiction in the line, how miserable it is. I always have a little bit random, but I I I I like to do uh ancestral type things. But I will tell you, if you put your DNA out there, just be careful because you might find something out that you didn't exactly want to find out some really cool stuff too. Uh I put my DNA out there and uh and got a message from somebody in our ancestry who who told her story. She was a baby uh abandoned in a back alley in PowerPoint, and and somehow tied my family line. Well, we did our research, and it was a distant relative of mine, I didn't know good at all, that got pregnant early on in line, uh, carried the pregnancy took their turn. Nobody ever knew about it, hit it from her parents, and left the baby in a background in in uh right down. And the baby was adopted. 15 years later, they come to me to find out more information, and and I just thought about that, and it turns out that the lady was recently deceased, or the model's recently deceased, but to go your entire life holding down rottenness in your bones, holding down a covering because you don't want to come clean, right? Um, imagine what. Imagine nine months of it, imagine game with doing this. This is not what we're made for, to hide things from others and to hide things from God, if that were possible. What does God want?

The Way Back Through Confession

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Confession. We come back to it again. Confession. Confession means to say the same thing as God. When we mess up, you say, God, I messed up, did the wrong thing. Sometimes we have to confess to other people. That's probably even more painful, isn't it? I messed up, I did the wrong thing. Confession and repentance is what's needed to go in the other direction, to say, you know what, that's who I was, that's not who I want to be. You're right, I was wrong, but I want to go the right way. And what David here says in Psalm 32 is that I know now is the place of blessing. Cursing on the other side. Blessing on confession and repentance and getting right with God. And knew it by experience. What does it take? 1 John 1.9 is so simple. If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now, that's the easy remedy, so to speak, here. Um, where's Jesus in all this? I don't think we understand this. We might as well just look. Where's Jesus in this? Uh the Old Testament speaks to them. Where is he? I think he's in Uriah, honestly. I think he's in Uriah in the Hitzel. As we see this innocent dying, doesn't it just break us up? And go, we go, why should Uriah have to die for David's sin? He didn't even know. He did the right thing over and over again. Never even opened his mouth over to this. He just did it willingly. And took the gift for David. Really? Well, Jesus, even more so, but he knew exactly what was going on. He laid down his life for us. Became a sacrifice by place so that we can be forgiven. You don't have to carry it around so that we can enjoy life with God. And the biggest recommendation I had against the enemy was confess. You mess up, confess. Tell what life it is. It's never too early and it's never too late to confess your sins. Come back to God, just like the prodigal son, who came back to the Father. The Father comes with open minds every time. So God, um such a dark time in the life of Deve. We could all find ourselves in a spot very similar. Yet He haven't created us to live at ours with you, but to live at peace, to live in in your presence, and that's still amazing. God help us to deal with our sin, according to trusting what you could taste to use.