Faithful, Flawed And After God’s Heart - King David

2 Samuel 11:2-5 [Text beside pic] says this: “One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, 3 and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "Isn’t this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" 4 Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her.... 5 The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, "I am pregnant."

Oops! Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, returns from the battlefield at David’s command.

David, really seriously wanting this whole affair to never have happened, tries to get Uriah to go home to his wife so that Uriah will think in the end that the child his wife bears is his own.

Uriah, in a gesture that surely must have utterly humiliated David, refuses the luxury of home and comfort and the arms of his wife while his men, the soldiers who have fought David’s battles at his side, are sleeping in the open field, risking their lives for David and for Israel.

Maybe awed and shamed by Uriah’s integrity and honour, perhaps just really in a blind, stupid panic, David sends Uriah back to the war front with a sealed letter to his commander instructing that commander to make sure Uriah goes to the front of battle.

This is the letter: “Put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die."

Uriah of course dies. Bathsheba, who is only a victim in this, mourns for her husband who David has murdered

Cut to one year later. Bathsheba has had David’s baby.

David has an important ally in Nathan, another prophet of God. Nathan comes to David. And he tells David a story:

“ "There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. 2 The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, 3 but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.

4 "Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him." 5 David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, "As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die! 6 He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity."

7 Then Nathan said to David, "You are the man! This is what the LORD , the God of Israel, says: ’I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. 8 I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. 9 Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? ou struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. 10 Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.’