So lesson nine is entitled David's Fall from Grace. We also go on and call it David's Fall from Grace and the resulting aftermath, the consequences of his sins. But David's Fall from Grace is plenty sufficient because there are always consequences to sin. There are always a ripple effect that is going to really damage us in the long run and cause us to suffer at our own hands.
So that's kind of what we're going to see with our poor friend David and his great sins with Bathsheba and Uriah, very, very famous. But let's see if we can't dive into some more details here and try to understand what's going on as well as to understand how we can advance in the spiritual life by avoiding some of the same mistakes that happens to all of us. Now we're going to be looking at chapters 11 through 18 in this ninth lesson and in chapter rather say lesson 10, next time we'll finish everything off. So we're in chapter 11 right now.
The last lesson was the height of David's career, his kingdom, his family. He just received this incredible covenant from God Almighty himself through the prophet Nathan. All these blessings that are going to be pouring upon him. We saw the characteristics of the kingdom.
It's absolutely dynamite and peace is coming to his kingdom as he's finishing off the rest of his enemies. And now we're going to see the exact opposite. The pendulum's going to swing the other way as he seemingly gets complacent or careless. And that's what we're going to find.
So let's dive in here and look at chapter 11 versus 1 and following 1 to 5 to be precise if you're reading along. It says in the spring of the year when the time when kings went forth about him, David sent Joab in a service with him and all of Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabah, but David remained Jerusalem. It happened late one afternoon when David rose from his couch and was walking upon the roof of the king's house that he saw from the roof of a woman bathing and the woman was very beautiful.
And David sent and inquired about the woman in one side as not the Beth Sheba, the daughter of Eliyam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. So David sent messengers and took her and she came to him and he lay with her. Now she was purifying herself from her uncleaness. Then she returned to her house and the woman conceived and she sent and told David, I am with child.
All right, let's stop right here. So here's the famous story of David, a man falling from grace with his first sin. In fact, what we're going to see here is he's going to fall into multiple sins, first covetousness. He's lusting after his neighbor's life, then adultery, then murder.
So I'm going to share how they all connect here and try to glean some spiritual insights from this as well, like I said. So I actually want to point out one thing is before we dive here into the story of the adultery, don't forget that we've been seeing all kinds of red flags and warning signs throughout David's whole life, his whole adult life, then accumulating more and more women. He's got multiple wives at this point, and that's a very bad thing. So I point out in previous lessons, the past two or three are give or take, that Deuteronomy 17 forbids the king for multiplying for himself wives, wealth, and weapons.
And we saw from chapters eight and nine that David did really, really well about not multiplying for himself wealth and weapons. He would donate the wealth to God and the temple and to his kingdom and the weapons like the horses specifically, he would eliminate. So those are, that's like two out of three, that's good. But the problem is he has been multiplying for himself wives and this is going to be David's downfall.
He's always like women, I think we've made that clear. He doesn't have a natural relationship with Jonathan or at least he didn't. Women has always been his problem. And now he's in the habit, he's established, he's powerful, God has given him his great covenant to me that he's letting his guard down.
And then the previous bad habits of taking whomever he wishes to wife is now going to lead him to take another woman to himself regardless of the fact that she's already married. So this is actually a really big spiritual lesson for us. There's many throughout this entire story. And that is, the fact that in our lives, we never really just wake up one day and commit grave sins, murder or robbing a bank or committing adultery or anything like this.
Big sins always result from a long time of committing smaller sins and not repenting of them or uprooting them from our lives. It's always the smaller sins that little by little left unchecked will guide us down the path of a graver mortal sin. I always think of the analogy of the garden. I mean, this is not the original person who thought of this.
Obviously, but it always struck with me when I think about it because when you have a garden, I used to have a garden, I lived in Kentucky and my wife started our very first garden. We moved into this little house and in the backyard they had a 20 foot by 20 foot koi pond with a bunch of big, beautiful koi in there. We're like, oh, this is nice, let's leave it here. Well, our young daughter at the time, I think she was five, fell into the koi pond.
And at that point we realized, I guess we can't have a koi pond after all. So we sold the koi and got in, filled up the pond with dirt, and we decided to make it into a little garden. And this is our first time at Garde really. I don't have a green thumb, I never really grew up gardening.
I grew up in California, so it's all brown anyways. And we soon realized, wow, all these vegetables and plants that we put into the ground, the seeds that we put into the ground are coming up and we're getting all kinds of vegetables. This is really wonderful. Well, at the same time, the weeds were coming up.
And if I got really busy, and I'm often very busy doing whatever it is I'm doing, and a couple of weeks goes by and I don't weed the garden, those weeds get really, really big. I'm telling you, I don't know what kinds of Kentucky weaves these were, but they would get above, and I live in Virginia now and they're just as big. So it must be just an east coast thing with all the humidity. But they would get well above my waist, to my chest.
These things grew really big. And as you try to rip out that weed in order to protect the rest of the garden, it's number one, extremely difficult. And number two, they destroyed all the soil where you pulled it out. You have this huge crater now on the ground.
And more often than not, you would damage the vegetables that you had planted nearby. So this has been the analogy for me for so, so long of the spiritual life. And again, I'm not the first person to have thought of this, but you've got to weed your garden regularly. It's really easier, it's much easier, and it's less damaging to pull out the weeds when they're just a couple of inches tall.
You just think, think, think, pull them all out. Everything's great, no damage to the soil, no damage to the vegetables. But if you let the weeds get too big, then it's going to be very damaging. That's what sin is.
Sin is basically the weeds in our spiritual garden. God is trying to produce much fruit through us, through his grace. But if we don't pull out the weeds, it's going to become too big for us to be able to manage effectively, right? So that's kind of the big thing of what's going on here with David.
Just as we launched this whole study of his fall from grace, he didn't weed the garden, the proverbial garden. he's taking lives and committing the smaller sins by breaking the law of Deuteronomy. And then now boom, you've got a much bigger problem, okay? Well, let's go on to read some of the details here with the actual story.
And that is in verse one, it says, in the spring of the year, the time of Kings went forth to battle, David remained at Jerusalem. Now many commentators have pointed out the fact that this seems to be a pretty big red flag in a warning sign. He is idle, he is slothful, he is neglecting and advocating his royal responsibilities of trying to, of needing to be with his army in the spring, because he only fought in the spring in the fall. So you have to go out there with your army and take care of business.
But he wasn't, right? So he was at home where he shouldn't have been. And then he gets up late in the afternoon one day, you know, kicking rocks on the roof, I kind of imagine him sleeping in, right? Late one afternoon, he kind of gets up and stretches, like I'm kind of bored and he's been playing video games maybe all morning long or something like that.
And he just gets up and he just kind of has his hands in his pockets and just kind of wandering around, just kind of again, not being occupied with good things. Remember the old proverb, idle hands is the devil's workshop. Well, that's essentially what's going on here. And this is a chain reaction too, that you're going to see along the same lines of leading your garden.
If the concept is one bad choice can lead to other bad choices and you got to stop that chain reaction. You should first be occupied with whatever it is God has you to do, you know, hard work or taking care of your family or I don't know, you could fill in the blank, there's a million different scenarios of what God is intending for us to do work or study or whatever, right? And that's not happening with David. So it's a chain reaction, one thing is leading to another.
And so when he is on the rooftop, he sees and lusts after Bathsheba while she's purifying herself. That's the first major mortal sin is covetousness. So I'm not covet that neighbor's wife. She clearly is, it's been proclaimed to him by his messengers.
She clearly is married, but one thing leads to another. Now, let me say something quickly about the purifying herself. She's purifying herself from her menstrual cycle, which tells us two things. Number one, she is not pregnant.
That's really, really important. Her husband, Uriah, has been out on the battlefield. So she's certainly not conceived through him, her husband, and also through anyone else for that matter, okay, up to this point, because she's just purifying herself, her periods over and she's in her fertile period, okay? So this is kind of a red flag here, like, oh my gosh, David is gonna take this woman in a time where clearly she is most capable of conceiving a child.
All right, so that's the first point that you need to understand about the purifying herself element. And then again, I just wanted to share with you along the lines of the chain reaction, leading the garden and being very, very careful to keep yourself upright and righteous and the small things. And then the large things will take care of themselves. Here's a little quote from Clement of Alexandria, Saint Clement of Alexandria, and the tradition says, the appetites are inflamed by the sensuality of the gaze, and our eyes used to looking lustfully at our neighbor because we are so idle, spark impure desires.
All right, so we gotta keep a close custody of the eyes. We're not talking just about sexualism, that could be any kind of sin that our eyes might desire, right? So he sees after her, the spark of impure's desires is ignited, like Clement says, and then he sends, and he inquires after her identity. And that's really interesting.
So he inquires after her identity, and a couple of different commentators will point out the irony here about, let me just read this quote for you. It says on previous occasions, David inquired about the Lord's will for his life, and there's a couple of references here in chapter two, one, five, 19, and 23, et cetera. But now, instead of seeking direction from God, he seeks information about a woman who has captivated his senses. Isn't that really, really interesting?
That kind of gives you an indication of how his priorities are all as skew, his moral compass is not working anymore. Previously, he used to inquire of God, Lord, what is your will for my life in this situation? And now he's not doing that because he's inquired of God. Guess what?
God would say, don't touch her, right? Forget about it. You've got plenty of why he was already. Just go visit one of them, you know, set up a little candlelight dinner or whatever you got to do.
Don't go near her, but he doesn't inquire after God. He inquires after her identity. And then learns like we already saw, she is married to Uriah. Now Uriah is one of David's top soldiers.
We'll talk more about him in just a little bit. Now, before we move on to this other major issue, which is murder, I do want to point out that we have zero idea or confirmation or certainty about Bathsheba's role in all of this. Depending on who you read and who you listen to, some people might go from one extreme and say that Bathsheba staged all of this. She's kind of like an opportunist, and she knew that David would be on the roof, and so she placed herself at the right window at the right time bathing so that way he would see her.
And so she wanted this whole thing and invited it. You will find people who maintain that to the opposite extreme, which is, she is, and it's not even an extreme because it's actually my position. She's an innocent victim. Like David, maybe she's careless.
I don't know, like it's hard to get into this. Why would she be bathing at the window? So close to the palace of David. Well, number one, she's so close to the palace of King David because Uriah was one of his top commanders.
So Uriah had prime real estate living there in Jerusalem next to the king because he was a trusted commander of the king. And that explains that. But she more than likely was innocent. She did not invite this.
And when the king sends her her, it's not likely that you're going to resist the king's advances and potentially be violated, violently violated by him or have Uriah be sentenced or removed from his post or whatever. She's in this horrible situation where she has to go through with it, maybe to protect her best interests and her husband's best interests. There's a lot of speculation as to what's going on, but I just wanted to make the point. I do not think that she was the one who invited this and orchestrated it because she wanted to maybe have her son become the king.
And I just think that's not well-founded at all. I think, especially as we're gonna see with the parallels in David's life, she is a victim of his sexual advances. So with that then, we just left off in verse five, she sends a little note, a little tweet, I suppose, because then people would read that, private tweet, I guess. She sends him a note saying, I'm with child.
And so David must initiate operation cover-up as quickly as possible. So we're in verse six. David sent word to Joab, send me Uriah the hit type. And Jacob sent Uriah to David.
When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab was doing, how the people fared, how the word prospered. And they got down to business, right? David sent to Uriah, go down to your house, wash your feet and Uriah went out of the king's house and there followed him a present from the king. So what is David doing here?
David is trying to cover up, trying to get Uriah to go home, very obviously, and sleep with his wife. So David is trying to, as much as he can, set up this amorous evening at home, right? Now, who is Uriah? Now, first let's talk about a couple things about who he is.
Uriah is a hit tight, which tells us immediately that he's a Gentile convert. In fact, Uriah means Yahweh is my light. And that's a very beautiful name, I think. You know, you talk about how God is the light of the world.
Jesus comes down, I'm the light of the world. And it's really, it's just a beautiful, beautiful name for a Gentile. So he's a convert. He clearly seems to have a good relationship with God because he's gonna follow the law very, very well.
And follow the obligations that are set upon him as a man of war. We're gonna go through those details in just a second. I think I pointed out too earlier that he is one of David's mighty men and most trusted soldiers and commanders. You find those details later on in Second Samuel, Chapter 23, verses 8, 39.
So he is not just some, some, quote unquote, random vague neighbor of David's. This is someone that David knows. So David has really betrayed someone very, very close to him. Someone who's very loyal to him, which makes the sin all the more bitter here, right?
So I will say also one thing about Bathsheba. If Uriah is a Gentile and a convert is Bathsheba, well, you're going to find debate about this. So Bathsheba's name means daughter of the oath or daughter of the covenants. So Bath, this is actually gonna be really interesting for Nathan's parable.
Bath means daughter, if in Shavah means oath or covenants. So some people say her name is Bathsheba, which is a Gentile origin. There's no consensus on this of whether or not she is a Gentile who married a Gentile, both of whom converted and rose up the ranks in David's army and in position. Don't exactly know.
I, in fact, I haven't studied that in super great depth what her lineage is down the line. But it's an interesting thought, especially if you compare it with the genealogy of Matthew and in chapter one of the gospel of Matthew, you've got four women mentioned, two of them are 100% Gentiles, which is Rahab and Ruth, Tamar, who conceived by Judah, I'm out of the position that she's a Canaanite. So therefore you would have Bathsheba true to form if she's a Gentile, then you've got four Gentile women in the genealogy of Jesus, which is really interesting. All right, so there's Uriah, the little biography of him.
And so back to our story, David tries to get him to go home, have this lovely dinner. He even sends a present back home with Uriah, but Uriah refuses, he refrains. It says in verse nine, he slept at the door of the king's house with all the servants of his Lord and did not go down to his house. And when they told David, Uriah did not go down to his house, David said, Uriah, have you not come from a journey?
Why did you not go down to your house? And Uriah said, the Ark of Israel, the Ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths, and my Lord, Joab and the servants of my Lord are camping in an open field. Shall I then go to my house to eat and drink and lie with my wife? As you live and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing.
Now this is actually a really good indicator that Uriah is a very faithful man, a really authentic convert to, we wouldn't say Judaism proper, because Judaism as we know it didn't even develop until really after the Babylonian captivity to a certain extent than certainly after the Roman destruction of the temple. So for lack of a better expression, the religion of Israel, I think that's really accurate. So what he's saying here is that, look, the law says in Leviticus and Deuteronomy that when you're fighting a battle, you must remain rich, really pure. You must not sleep with your spouse.
So that's what I'm doing. And how would it be if I went home and slept with my wife and broke the law when everyone else, my companions and arms are out there fighting in the field? So this is a very honorable and laudable thing that Uriah does. All right, now a second time, David tries to make this evening at home happen by the classic strategy of getting him drunk.
And that's what happens next. That was verse 13, David invited him and he ate his presence and drinks that he made him drunk. And then the evening he went on to lie on his couch with the servants of his Lord. So twice now, two for two, even after being inebriated a bit, Uriah proves to be the better man.
So then that leads to the tragic story in verse 14 and following when David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it ironically and tragically by the hand of Uriah himself. How awful is that? Uriah is carrying a letter with his own death sentence in it. And David says to Joab, go and essentially make sure he dies in battle, okay?
Which Joab, I should point out, is happy to comply. Joab has no scruples. He's proved to be a murderer himself multiple times in the past and we're not even done talking about his story. So he can be like, okay, whatever, whatever you need king, like you know, might make right.
You know, whatever we need to secure the throne and secure our interests personal or otherwise. So of course he dies in battle. A messenger comes back from Joab to tell King David at the end of chapter 11. And David understands, you can read the whole chapter for yourself, we've got a lot to cover in this lesson here.
But to summarize it here, the messenger tells David what happened and how they were losing a battle. Uriah was killed. And then David responds to the messenger in verse 25, do not let this matter trouble you. So tell Joab, do not let this matter trouble you.
Literally the Hebrews, do not let this be evil in your eyes. Then it goes on and it's talked about how the wife of Uriah, that's she, but it's always saying the wife of Uriah, by the way, note that, because the text is making it clear that this is not David's lawful wife, it's the wife of another man. And it's just kind of hammering home the point over and over again that David committed these graves since. So it says that she mourned for him and then went to David and he married her.
But the last verse is the thing was evil in the eyes of the Lord. And here's a couple of contrasts in the story. Note how Uriah, a Gentile convert, a well-established soldier or commander in David's army, but nevertheless, pretty lowborn dude here. He is very faithful and honorable to the law, to his commanders, to his compatriots.
He's not even gonna do even a small thing, like lawfully sleep with his wife. He's not gonna do any of that, because he's such an upstanding dude, compared to the king himself, who is the king of all of Israel, right? Who's received all these blessings from God. And he's acting like a total criminal.
He's acting like a total sinner in every which way, sleeping with his wife. And then of course down the line, getting Uriah killed him. And I should also point out, it's not just a riot, Uriah who's killed. But when they, if you read the details of the report of the battle, Joab had to send a bunch of men forward, their archers started firing.
So in order to get Uriah killed, there was a lot of collateral damage. There were other soldiers, good fighting men, who died as well. So it's a complete disaster here, an absolute disaster. You've got this contrast between David, who is the king, who is acting so dishonorably, versus Uriah, who is a servant of the king, and a Gentile convert to boot, who is acting very honorable and very laudable.
You see? Then there's that final contrast I pointed out. David will say to Joab, ah, don't let this thing be evil in your eyes. But God, forgot it was.
David says to Joab, don't let it be evil in your eyes, but it was evil in the side of the Lord. It was evil in the eyes of the Lord. So no moral relativism here in all of this. David seems to have forgotten his place by throughout these months or years I would however long it lasted of him being firmly established in his rule and things just got out of control.
And now he's trying to just brush it off. Ah, don't let it be evil in your eyes or in your sight. But it will always be evil in the side of the Lord. And that also is an expression that's a callback to the whole era of the judges, of the moral relativism that plagued the judges.
And they did whatever they wanted to do. So this is a disaster of a story. His double whammy sent actually triple like I pointed out because he first lusts and covet her, commits adultery with her, it immersors Uriah in order to cover up the story. And because this was evil in the side of the Lord, the Lord's not going to let this slide.