What Does Bad Authority Do?

Those who abuse their authority tend to dehumanize those beneath them.   #daybydaylw   Interested in learning more about becoming a devoted follower of Christ? Go to follow.lifeword.org!   ~~~   Power and authority can give you a minimizing disposition towards people People become tools to serve your sin, not partners in the kingdom We made mention of David’s “sending” all through this text. David was sending messengers to find out who this woman was. David was sending servants to bring this woman in. David was sending messengers to Joab. All of this exercising of power in the wrong way. Was it wrong for David to have this capacity to send messengers and servants? Absolutely not. That is how business gets done. But David was bringing these people into his sinful schemes. They may have been none the wiser, but it is still a dehumanizing use of the people, not just under David’s command, but under his care. He did not see these people as fellow partners in establishing and maintaining the kingdom of God. He saw these people simply as secret agent tools to get what he desired. “The woman” Not only do we have the presence of these servants being used by David, which happens because David is minimizing them as people, but we also have Bathsheba herself. Notice something with me. She is referred to as “the woman” in verse 2-3, as we might expect. She was a new unknown character to the story. But notice what doesn’t happen once we learn her name in verse 3. In verse 5, after David sends her away, it say, “The woman conceived.” Why does’t it use her name? Why doesn’t it say “Bathsheba conceived”? This was the narrator’s way of showing us what David thought of her. She is just—the woman. I don’t think she is named by her name again until the middle of chapter 12.