Introduction
On 27 March 1977, two fully boarded and fully-fuelled Boeing 747s collided on the runway at Tenerife North Airport. The impact and resulting fire killed 583 people aboard the two aircraft. It was, and remains to this day, the deadliest accident in aviation history.
The most disastrous and destructive event in King David’s life was undoubtedly the night he met Bathsheba. But that attempted take-off in Tenerife and that night of passion in Jerusalem had much more in common than the magnitude of their disastrous consequences as we’ll see.
If you don’t know the story of David and Bathsheba, it’s a sordid and sleazy tale involving voyeurism, perhaps rape, certainly adultery, deception, drunkenness conspiracy, premeditated murder, lies, humiliating exposure and public disgrace. Apart from that, you’ve got to say that David comes out of the narrative pretty well!
David, now midway through his 40-year reign, meets Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11 which starts like this:
In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.
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, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, “She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness.) Then she went back home. The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, “I am pregnant.”
So David, looking to cover his tracks, orders Uriah to return home from the war. David then tries three times to get him to sleep with his wife while on leave to erase any suspicion about the paternity of the child she carries.
But each time Uriah refuses, even after having been plied with alcohol. He says it would be dishonourable to enjoy some home comforts while his brothers in arms are risking their lives on the battlefield.
So David gives instruction to deploy Uriah on the frontline and then leave him exposed so he is sure to get killed, which is what happens. The report comes back.
Verse 23: The messenger said to David, “The men overpowered us and came out against us in the open, but we drove them back to the entrance of the city gate. Then the archers shot arrows at your servants from the wall, and some of the king’s men died. Moreover, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead.”
Verse 26: When Uriah’s wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him. After the time of mourning was over, David had her brought to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing David had done displeased the Lord.
Some months later, the prophet Nathan pays David a visit and tells him a story about two men; one wealthy, one poor. The rich man, owning large numbers of sheep and cattle of his own, callously seizes the poor man’s one little ewe lamb to serve up to guests at a dinner party.
David burns with anger; he knows from his shepherd days how emotionally attached you can get to a lamb that you’ve looked after from birth. David says, “What? As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die!”
And Nathan says, “It’s you. You did it. You stole your servant’s wife. Then you killed Uriah.”
Immediately, David melts. There’s no bluffing, no excuses, no self-defence. He hangs his head and admits it. “I have sinned against the Lord,” he says. And from this come Psalm 32 and Psalm 51, songs of deep repentance and forgiveness and hope.
David – Saint or Sinner?
We’ve been marvelling for two months now about David; this great man of faith. His heart for God. His defeat of the mocking and godless Goliath. His passionate worship. His love of integrity. His zeal for God’s honour.
And now this! Dereliction of duty, lust, infidelity, hypocrisy, treachery, assassination, scandal and cover-up – all of it with seemingly no shame, no crisis of conscience, no sense of guilt, no trace of remorse, and at first no repentance at all. Can this really be the same man? And, of course, it is!
1 Kings 15.5 sums up David’s entire reign in one sentence: David had done what was right in the eyes of the Lord and had not failed to keep any of the Lord’s commands all the days of his life - except in the case of Uriah the Hittite.
It’s an uncharacteristic moment of madness which leads to an equally out of character season of sinfulness.
David really does have a heart for God, but every human heart, without exception, is capable of great wickedness.
All of us have a battle going on in the heart where our brand new, born-again identity is scrapping it out with the old sinful nature that used to rule the roost. And the gloves are off!
Jeremiah 17.9 says, The heart [even of a godly man like David] is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
But is it really 100% all David’s fault? To what extent does Bathsheba share David’s guilt in this story? What do you think?
Could she possibly bathe more discreetly, away from prying eyes? Is she maybe open to an opportunity for a bit of a fling with her husband away a long time? Could she scream or protest when David takes her into his bedroom? Could she, like Joseph did with Potiphar’s wife, just run away?
Or are the power dynamics of this encounter too weighted against her? She is after all summoned into the presence of one of the most powerful men in the world, a man everyone hails for slaying tens of thousands. It is an intimidating experience for her to say the least.
When you look at the story more closely, I think it swings decisively towards being 100% on David.
Water was scarce in Jerusalem, with no natural source in the city at that time so women would typically have bathed once monthly at the end of the menstrual cycle. And that would render them ritually pure and able to enter the tabernacle or temple.
So Bathsheba’s bathing, far from being a brazen exhibition, was probably an expression of her devotion to God and her observance of the Law of Moses.
Most likely, her courtyard was overlooked only by the tallest building in the city; David’s palace. And Bathsheba had every reason to believe that the king would be on the battlefield alongside her husband.
It says David sent (v4) messengers to get her, not “invite her” not “request the pleasure of her company.” David doesn’t so much meet her as take her.
And when Nathan confronts David there’s no suggestion that Bathsheba was complicit. “You are the man,” “you despised the word of the Lord,” “you took Uriah’s wife”, “you killed him with the sword,” “you did it in secret” he says.
And David never replies, “well, we had an affair.” Or “we had a moment of madness.” Still less, “she was asking for it.” “I have sinned,” he says.
Remember that plane crash I mentioned earlier? When the investigation was completed, they found that many factors contributed to the accident including pilot error, communications difficulties, a sudden descent of thick fog on the runway and a bomb threat at a neighbouring airport leading to air-traffic congestion.
All those factors created a perfect storm of risk. But there was, they found, only one fundamental cause to the accident. A pilot attempted take-off without permission to do so.
OK, there was bad static on the radio. OK, there was a misunderstanding over vocabulary. OK, the fog reduced visibility to 100m. OK, there were planes that wouldn’t have been there if they hadn’t been rerouted because of a bomb threat. But if that pilot hadn’t initiated take off, none of the other factors would have caused an accident.
Here, you can say that there are many contributing factors that lead to David's downfall. His not being away at war as would usually be the case. Bathsheba’s bathing being visible from the palace roof. Her husband being away from home at the time. David just happening to be on the roof at the moment she was washing…
But the one fundamental cause is identical to that plane crash; a man taking a course of action without permission to do so.
So how did one whose heart was so good go so badly wrong?
1. Selective Bible Reading
When you read the story, it looks like it all starts with David noticing Bathsheba – and taking a second look. But in fact, David’s first mistake comes about twenty years earlier, as his reign was just beginning.
David knew that Deuteronomy 17 says this: When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, ‘Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us,’ be sure to appoint over you a king the Lord your God chooses...
So far so good. But a few verses later it says this: He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray.
But David skips that bit. Instead, he acts like the pagan, idolatrous kings of the time. By the time David was crowned, he already had three wives. Before long, he had four more. By the time he captured Jerusalem there were still others. Plus concubines...
At the coronation earlier this month, King Charles III was given several gifts and emblems but the first, and most important, was a Bible which was presented to him with these words:
“Sir, to keep you ever mindful of the law and the gospel of God as the rule for the whole life and government of Christian princes, receive this book, the most valuable thing that this world affords. Here is wisdom.”
I hope he reads it and treasures it as his mother certainly did. David did. Usually. But he skimmed over the bits that challenged his lifestyle, with tragic consequences.
I know people who must have heard thousands of sermons, over years and years, good ones too, but who remain unmoved and unchanged by the gospel.
The church planting missionary to the Auca Indians in Ecuador, Elisabeth Elliot, used to say, “The Word of God I think of as a straight edge, which shows up our own crookedness. We cannot really tell how crooked our thinking is until we line it up with the straight edge of Scripture.”
It seems paradoxical, but for all David’s genuine love for the Lord, he never really restrains his desire for women and bring it under control.
2. Complacency
The next thing is that David is in the wrong place at the wrong time – and that is his fault. He has allowed himself to become comfortable. Success does that for us more than struggle.
It’s the springtime; that’s the moment for him to get going, and lead his army to finish the job of subduing the Ammonites.
But David likes the creature comforts of his palace a bit too much. There’s a time and place for rest. And burnout doesn’t honour God.
But this is time for work! David has become lazy; he sends others off to serve the Lord and do his job while he puts his feet up in a life of luxury. There he is, walking back and forth on his palace roof. Literally and figuratively going nowhere.
He is like Homer Simpson in the cartoon, who says, “It's not easy to juggle a pregnant wife and a troubled child, but somehow I manage to fit in eight hours of TV a day.”
David is bored. Because he’s not where God has called him to be. And when you’re not doing what God has called you to do, there’s plenty of time for the devil to mess with his head.
Are you where God wants you to be? Are you doing what he wants you to do? Or have you taken your foot off the gas and started wasting your life?
3. A Second Look
Thirdly, David, walking on his roof, thinks he’s the master of all he surveys. He’s like Simba in the Lion King; “Everything the light touches is mine.”
And then the mellow evening light falls on this beautiful woman, naked and unaware. And he notices her. How can he not? He takes a second look and then a third. He can stop right there and then. He can turn his head and walk back inside.
They say that 90% of men confess to struggling with lust. 90%! They also say that the other 10% are known to be liars!
I remember having a conversation with two church leaders, one male, one female, some years ago. It was shortly after a fairly prominent married pastor had been discovered having an affair with a member of his staff. It ended his ministry.
My female colleague, exasperated, said to us, “Why do men always do this? How difficult is it for you guys just to keep your zip up?”
And my male colleague said to her, without excusing or justifying or mitigating in any way that man’s behaviour, he said, “What women don’t always know is that for the majority of men sexual attraction is instant and full on. So a fall from grace can happen to anyone, even one with a flawless record to that point.”
It’s a conversation that I’ve often reflected on.
The thing about any temptation, for you it might be gossip, or gambling, or overeating, or laziness, or anger, or drinking too much - whatever it is - the more time we allow it to get a hold on us by not fighting it, the more desensitised we become to the damage it does to our lives.
It’s a bit like sliding down a hill. It’s much easier to stop sliding when you’re near the top than when you’re picking up speed, losing control and tumbling head-over-heels halfway down. David could have stopped sliding right at the start.
But he lets the look linger. And he starts to slip… Then he enquires about her. And he slides a bit more… Then he realises her husband is not at home. His mind is working away and he’s picking up speed… Then he sends for her. Now the fall is getting out of control.
4. The Conscience Override
At which point he moves to step 4 and it’s game over. All this time, he’s got a sinking feeling inside. His conscience is telling him, “don’t do it.” There are alarm bells going off in his head, but he drowns them out.
Do you know the main reason why smoke alarms don’t work? It’s because people take the batteries out. And the reason people yield to temptation is because they switch off their sense of right and wrong.
As Bathsheba is escorted by David’s staff to the palace, he is removing the batteries to the smoke alarm of his conscience one by one.
Repentance and Restoration
In 12.16, after being confronted with what he’s done, David fasts, puts on sackcloth and sits, not on his royal throne, but in the dust on the ground. It’s proper repentance.
This is when he writes Psalm 51:
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin… Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation...
Kathie was suffering from soreness in her jaw recently that affected the entire left side of her face. The pain never subsided all day. It was
stopping her from sleeping at night. She took paracetamol - no effect at all. She took ibuprofen
but that didn’t help either. She found some codeine in an old box that was over a
decade out of date. That helped - a bit. But not nearly enough.
She went to the doctor, but she said it was a job for the dentist. So she went to the dentist who took an x-ray but said it showed nothing. Then the dental hygienist pointed out on the x-ray a crack in one of her teeth. At which point, I am not making this up, at which point the dentist put his glasses on and said, “Oh yeah, you’re right!”
The tooth had to be pulled out, which required a lot of physical exertion, the dentist having to really put his back into it, because the root went very deep. I'm sure it wasn’t pleasant to watch. But once the tooth was out and all the blood was cleaned up off the walls and floors (maybe a slight exaggeration!) the pain was gone.
David says in Psalm 32 that his bones wasted away through groaning all day long, his strength was sapped, there was a heaviness on him - until he confessed.
Then I acknowledged my sin to you” he says, “and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.” And you forgave the guilt of my sin… Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord does not count against them and in whose spirit is no deceit.
Having all your sins forgiven, all your guilt dealt with, all the shame taken care of – what a relief!
Sin usually brings us unhappiness though. For David there was the greatest pain a parent can experience; the death of a child. And public disgrace. And loss of authority, eventually becoming a figure of fun. And family disintegration.
You can plot a graph of David’s life and it’s very simple; it’s an upward line of continual spiritual progress until the night he sees Bathsheba and it’s sadly all downhill from that night on.
When Nathan confronts the king, David, full of indignation, says that the man who did this "must pay for that lamb four times over because he did such a thing and had no pity." Tragically, that curse comes down on David; four of his sons (the child Bathsheba was carrying, Amnon, Absalom and Adonijah) would all die before their time. So David did grieve four times over for the one innocent life of Uriah the Hittite.
Ending
But as I end, I want to say this: no matter what you’ve done, where you’ve been or how long it’s gone on, you cannot go so low that grace is no longer able to reach you.
David was captivated by Bathsheba’s beauty. And it led to a great ugliness.
But David would go on to marry Bathsheba and they would then have other children together. The next one would be Solomon, which means peace, reflecting the peace they found with God after all that turmoil. Solomon would take the throne and continue David’s royal line which would lead all the way to Jesus.
It’s what Francine Rivers calls the lineage of grace. One of many shady and shameful stories in Jesus’ family tree that leads, despite all that fallenness and disgrace, to the salvation of the world.
And one day the Lord Jesus, the greatest descendant of David and Bathsheba, would be described in these words:
He had no beauty [like Bathsheba] or majesty [like King David] to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. (Isaiah 53.2-3).
Yet the beauty of the Lord, stunningly glorious, is displayed at that moment of his greatest ugliness.
Are you, like David, someone who needs to turn back to the Lord today? Or are you maybe, like Bathsheba, someone who has been badly wronged?
As we come to communion now let’s remember that Jesus died not only for the wrongs we have done, but also for the wrongs done to us. Let’s receive grace for a new beginning and a cleansed heart as we break bread together.
Sermon preached at King's Church Darlington, 28 May 2023 (coincidentally, our 40th wedding anniversary!)
