In a recent post I spoke about King David’s level of forgiveness concerning his adultery, murders, lies, theft and shame during his blasphemous relationship with Bathsheba. I started out with this: David looked around at all of his possessions. He admired the finery of his life and the people who appreciated and even adored him. His was a challenging but rewarding life. It had been well described as “Blessings galore and ten thousand beside”. He surveyed all which was before him. He realized that there was nothing he desired which would be denied him. He was a man of the people and a leader beyond compare. There was but one thing David did not fully comprehend of all his blessings. Why was it, that Uriah had a blessing which David did not have?
It is Not a matter of lust or greed or selfish desire but rather one of …
And from there I went on to talk about forgiveness. So now I’d like to go down a different path to finish the line above. It was not about lust or greed or selfish desire but rather an issue of trust. David did not trust God. Oh to be fair David had a very good relationship with God. He had trusted God many times in his life and always seen Him faithful to His word and His promises. David had slain the Lion and the Bear and protected the lambs that were in His charge. He had trusted God to deliver Him from Goliath and Saul’s insane pursuits and from the times when he feigned allegiance to the enemies of Israel. He had seen God faithful in protecting him from his own anger through the intercession of Nabal’s wife. Yet in this moment David failed.
I don’t think that David failed to believe that God was big enough. Or that He was Good enough, or kind or loving or caring or attentive enough. I think that David simply, like you and I, did not think that God would see his desire as right for him. David rightly thought that God would not see the importance of it through David’s eyes.
In second Samuel chapter eleven the entire story is laid out as David’s failures mount one after another until He finally takes Bathsheba as his wife. The last verse of the chapter reveals that David was right about God’s perspective. It says “But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.” So if as we have surmised, David knew God wouldn’t approve, if this one little sin of lust was going to destroy David’s leadership and testimony and relationship with God, why would he do it anyway?
Our first response might be that he didn’t think about it. Or it happened to fast he couldn’t stop. Perhaps no one else said it was a bad idea. Or, whatever. On and on we could go. Some of that may even have been a little bit true. But the much larger truth is that David was not neglected or needy. David looked upon her with lust in his heart and committed adultery in his heart. He did this because he did not trust God to allow his sinful selfish desire to be fulfilled at the expense of so many others. In that moment he became his own God making his own judgments of right and wrong in the universe he had just created for himself in his own mind.
Did I mention that David and Bathsheba, for it was a joint effort of willing collusion, broke all Ten Commandments in one unending stream of wickedness? First he placed himself and his desires as the god of his soul. He raised up Bathsheba’s body as an image of his god for this night. Where God had forbidden this sin David treated God’s word as empty vanity and took God’s name in vain. He caused his enemies to blaspheme the Holy God he was committed to worship. He could not go to the altar of God clean on the Sabbath. He dishonored his parents and Eliam her father. He killed not only Uriah but all those who went forward in the battle with him, many soldiers died. He committed adultery in the flesh. He stole the lamb from Uriah’s lap. He lied to Uriah and the generals and to all Israel.
And the tenth commandment says “Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbor’s wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbor’s house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or anything that is thy neighbor’s.” Which one did he miss?
He did not trust God to approve of His desire. He did not desire God’s right fulfillment for his needs waiting in the bed of his legal wives. He did not even think that God would ever find out or that Uriah would even suspect. In that he was right. Uriah was far more honorable than the king he was sworn to serve. It is interesting to note that just a few years earlier God had warned Israel through Samuel the prophet how the king they desired would oppress them. “For they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.” David did not desire God to reign over his physical desire and did that which was not pleasing to the Lord.
Some of us seemingly have David as our example. Some of us, you and I, have not trusted God to provide our desires and have taken it into our own hands to play the fool, fulfill the flesh and blaspheme the Holy One of Israel just as David did. Now while some might never do this despicable act as fully as David did in the flesh, we have used other means. We lust and substitute, at least mentally. We crave and dwell in fantasies. We scheme how we might, if only we would, if only we could. For some it may not be flesh. It may be money, or wisdom, or respect, or any number of dangling low fruit Satan has opportuned before you. You and I simply do not trust that what the Lord Jesus has ordained for us is sufficient for our need and greed.
It is not dissimilar to a three year old child throwing a temper tantrum because they want what they don’t need, they seek to take into their bosom that which will only burn them and they will expend any cost to obtain it. Even if they despise it after the pleasure, as Ammon did to Tamar (2Sam 13). In the end, the cost is greater than you could have imagined.
Oh, it is true. You can be forgiven and restored but the damage cannot be undone.
“And it came to pass on the seventh day that the child died.”
For your sin , families are split and destroyed. Faith is undone and hatred is unquenched. Your future is questionable and flooded with what might have been. If only you had trusted in God. If only you had waited just a little longer.
This question is not about lust or greed or selfish desire but rather one of trust. Trust is another way of saying love. It involves respect which involves fear. David was now the lion stealing the lamb. Uriah was probably in awe of David’s blessings and could not have imagined his sweet wife would ever be of interest to one who had so much. Bathsheba probably trusted her husband would return to meet her needs.
Trust is another way of saying love. God loves you as He did David and Bathsheba and Uriah. His expectation is that you will rest in His love and see your greatest desires fulfilled in Him. It is not just in this life that we know His great blessings. From the moment of David’s restoration, there was a walking with God that was different than before and yet a trusting in his Savior. Perhaps your walk needs to be restored and you need to go forward differently. You cannot undo the pain and the past you have caused but you can go on without the condemnation of the past in the forgiveness of His grace.
Repentance, David knew that. Surrender, David knew that. Walking forward in God’s love with sin and its consequences under the blood, David knew that.
Maybe you should too.