Year One, September 23

Pray That You May Not Enter Into Temptation1

2 Samuel 11:1-3; 6-10; 12-17; 26-27

1In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.

Perhaps David had begun to give in to a life of ease and decided to allow the battles of his country to be fought by others. If this is the case, then it teaches us that laziness is the helper of wrongdoing.

2It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, (Had he been sleeping in until so late in the day? Had he become that self-indulgent? If so, is it any wonder that he fell?) that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. 3And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” (David sent for her at once and took her to himself, thus committing the grossest sin. Alas! Alas! how far the mighty have fallen!)

In a short time David found that his sin would be discovered. So he came up with an excuse to have Uriah return home from the battle in an attempt to hide his shameful sin.

6So David sent word to Joab, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent Uriah to David. 7When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab was doing and how the people were doing and how the war was going. 8Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet.” And Uriah went out of the king’s house, and there followed him a present from the king. 9But Uriah slept at the door of the king’s house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house. 10When they told David, “Uriah did not go down to his house,” David said to Uriah, “Have you not come from a journey? Why did you not go down to your house?” (Uriah answered that he would not go home to sleep in comfort while the ark of the covenant and his fellow soldiers were in tents, or encamped in the open field.)

Here we find a common soldier being self-disciplined and self-denying, while the famous psalmist had become pleasure seeking and shameless.

12Then David said to Uriah, “Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back.” So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. 13And David invited him, and he ate in his presence and drank, so that he made him drunk. And in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house. (David deliberately got Uriah drunk. This was a very wicked thing to do. But with all of his cleverness, David did not succeed in covering up his crime. This led him to act even more wickedly. Now he would become guilty of murder. “How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn!”2 “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.”3)

14In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. 15In the letter he wrote, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, that he may be struck down and die.” 16And as Joab was besieging the city, he assigned Uriah to the place where he knew there were valiant men. 17And the men of the city came out and fought with Joab, and some of the servants of David among the people fell. Uriah the Hittite also died.

The man after God’s own heart had fallen so low that he had become both an adulterer and a murderer! In those days, other kings did these kinds of things repeatedly and their people would not dare to complain about it. But king David was a chosen servant of God and it was a disgustingly evil thing for him to commit such crimes.

26When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she lamented over her husband. 27And when the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD. (The sinner may have dreamed that he had cleverly hidden his crime, but this last sentence was the signal that announced the death of his secret. If our actions displease the Lord, nothing else in our life will win his approval.)

^{_______________}

¹ Matthew 26:41

² Isaiah 14:12

³ 1 Corinthians 10:12