When Sin Kills (2 Samuel 11)

Well good morning Garden City Church. It is so good to be here with you today. We love you guys, we pray for you guys, and we are grateful to partner with you in this as well. If you have a Bible and I hope you do go ahead and grab that and meet me over in 2 Samuel 11. 

I guess because I am the guest speaker from America I was assigned the text on sin, sex, and murder so here we are.

Intro: On April 10, 1912 The Titanic left South Hampton, England for New York City. By all accounts it was the greatest feat of engineering ever assembled. It was 882 Ft long and had a system of watertight compartments that deemed the ship “unsinkable.”

Well, everyone knows that just four days into their journey the Titanic struck an iceberg and the unsinkable ship, sank.

Here’s the deal, the thing most people don’t know is that the captain of the Titanic was warned over and over again about the ensuing iceberg and he said, (and I quote), “Shut up, shut up, you are blocking my lines,” as the reports came in.

Y’all, by all accounts the Titanic was amazing– the problem wasn’t the Titanic, the problem was the success of its builders.

• At some point the overwhelming pressure of their success built up and they couldn’t not read their own press.

Listen, I don’t know if you have ever felt this before but it totally makes sense to me.

Sometimes there is a pressure to succeed that people put on you and you don’t want to disappoint them

• Maybe it’s the kid whose parents put an enormous amount of pressure on them because of the time and money they have spent on sports

I know some people who feel it with their marriage. They were the first ones to have a successful marriage and they put so much pressure on themselves to make it that they actually run the risk of crushing each other in the process.

As we come to our text today I want you to see something about King David.

At this point he has achieved everything you could imagine!

• Remember that he started out as the little shepherd boy that his father Jesse didn’t even think worthy to be called in when Samuel was anointing the next king
• Then you fast forward the story and Saul’s army is fighting against the Philistines and Jesse, David’s dad, tells him to go bring his brothers a sandwich on the battle field

But then everything changed!

David went from the boy guarding his sheep to defeating Goliath and then killing thousands of people and the armies of Israel getting behind him.

Y’all, he became a national hero and eventually the chosen king of Israel

• Which is what makes this entire narrative so surprising.

In just a second you are going to see a humble Godly leader fall and before we even look at the narrative I want to say something really quickly:

Listen to me: It is really easy to look at someone else’s fall and not give them grace

• Y’all, I see it all the time here in America
• A pastor has an affair and we are ready to crucify him
• (and here me, I’m not making excuses and not minimizing any of that)
• But I do wonder if King David would have had any chance at redemption in our world today

Listen, before we can ever sit in the seat of judgement I want us to wrestle with the fact that we are all just one bad decision away for doing the same exact detrimental kind of things in our own lives.

The great Russian Novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was sent to the gulags and experienced horrific suffering and he wrote, “The line between good and evil runs through every human heart.”

Y’all, I am convinced it’s the moment that you say “never me” that you are in the perfect position for it to be you.

I mean, think about the Bible. Think about the people that God used throughout the entire Bible to build his kingdom and write the story of redemption that you and I get to enjoy today:

Adam: I mean, Adam abdicated his responsibility to protect his family and let Satan come in and deceive him and his wife.

• He picked moral autonomy over a relationship with the Lord and sin entered the world

His son Cain killed Abel

Noah got drunk and exposed himself to his kids

Abraham lied about his wife twice to cover his own back

Jacob was a man of deception 

Moses killed a guy

Peter denied Jesus three times

And Paul was a terrorist and a murderer

Like I could go on and on but I hope you get the point

The heart is an idol factory like John Calvin famously said and maybe my favorite quote of all time is from the Croatian professor Mirslov Volf, “Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans and myself from the community of sinners.”

You see what he’s saying?

• Translation: When you see people as sub-human because of the things they have done– that’s when you judge them
• And that’s only possible when you stop seeing yourself as SINNER first

So, ya, David screwed up bigtime. And he’s going to pay the consequences for his sins but man, if we don’t see ourselves like David then we are in BIG trouble because there is probably an iceberg of sin right around the corner that you are blind to and it’s going to crush you. 

Alright: With that in mind, let me walk you through the text and point out some things along the way and then we will go home:

2 Samuel 11:1 In 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.

I want you to notice a couple super important things.

First notice the time of year– it was the time when kings go out to battle.

Y’all, just a quick historical point…. Coming out of the winter months it would have been cold and wet so nations would wait until late April or early May so the conditions were better to go to war.

But the big thing is that David should have been at war.

• And I mean, he was a man of war
• It’s not like David wasn’t a fighter, he commanded the armies of Israel and killed the greatest enemy of the nation

Honestly, we have absolutely no clue why he didn’t go but I do know that passivity is the breeding ground for sin.

You see, I think that David had become king and he started to read his own press

• Y’all, I think that he forgot what got him there and he started to feel entitled

And I think that happens to a lot of us as we climb the ladder of success

• It’s super easy to believe the lie that you deserve to be sitting in the seat that you are so you start treating people differently because you are up at the top

I think David believed the lie that his past obedience earned him the right to phone it in.

• And I am just going to tell you that’s a dangerous place to be

Because living in yesterday’s obedience doesn’t excuse disobedience today

• You have to continually be faithful every single day or else you are going to fall

Here’s what I know: If David had gone out to battle like he was supposed to, none of this would have ever happened

• But he doesn’t 
• He’s sitting in the palace and he’s bored

Listen and write this down: The greatest battles of temptation don’t come when you are busy, they come when you’re bored.

Examples: It’s at night when you are sitting by yourself and you grab your phone that you find yourself down a dark hole that’s hard to come back from

Y’all, passivity will kill you!

Every single one of us have heard the saying that idle hands are the Devil’s workshop and it’s true.

Here’s my question for you

• Are you idle in your relationship with the Lord?
• You hear what I am saying?
  • Are you lackadaisical in your pursuit of intimacy with the Lord because that’s exactly what Satan wants you to be
• It’s not that you don’t love Jesus it’s just that you’ve stop pursuing him– you aren’t proactive
  • You only pray when you need something and you barely ever open up the word to spend time with him

Listen, we cannot afford to be casual in our relationship with Jesus– we have to pursue him with our whole heart.

• And I am telling you– yesterday’s obedience isn’t going to sustain today’s relationship

Just because you got baptized 10 years ago and you’ve gone on a mission trip 

• That’s not the point yall

By all accounts– David did the thing

• And now he’s king and he’s believing the lie that he’s arrived

Write this down: Prosperous times produce passive wills.

• You see that in the Titanic
• You see that in David
• Listen, I see it all the time in the wildly successful city that I planted a church in

Example: I live in one of the wealthiest places on the planet and I have found that people are too busy for God, and they don’t need anything 

• So, on the outside their lives look amazing
• But our city is rampant with adultery, drugs, and suicide because people are dying on the inside

Read the text again: In 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.

But David remained at Jerusalem. Don’t remain in your own life 

• Keep moving forward and keep doing the things that God called you to do 

Keep reading with me: ² It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful.

Listen y’all, nothing just happens. You hear me? Everybody I know that has a fall says something like, “I don’t know how it happened.”

I do…. It’s a downward spiral. It doesn’t start out as sin it starts out as you not doing the things you should have been doing.

David should have been at war, instead he’s sitting at home.

But then notice that David goes out on his roof and sees a beautiful woman bathing.

Here’s the deal: It’s honestly not a sin for him to have seen her

• And the Bible goes out of it’s way to tell you that she’s beautiful

Let me just say something really quickly:

• If you grew up in Christian culture you were probably taught that it is icky to notice a person and realize that they are attractive
• Y’all, there is absolutely nothing wrong with noticing beauty

What’s wrong is the intention of the heart afterward

Notice that David saw her, noticed her, and he didn’t stop there!

• That’s a problem

BTW- can I tell you something really quickly

• David’s problem didn’t start here
• It’s not like he’s about to just so happen to fall into an affair

David’s problem is that he continually acquiesced on Biblical obedience that that created the fertile grounds for disobedience.

Here’s what I mean: By the time we get to the story of David and Bethsheba David already had multiple wives and concubines (I think 17 total)

• Y’all, this is God’s king and he’s already acting like all the worldly kings
• God had already clearly said that marriage is between one man and one woman for a lifetime and that wasn’t good enough for David.

Let me just say this: Living a life of disobedience will always result in making decisions that dishonor God.

I really need you to understand this: David’s fundamental problem wasn’t Bathsheba’s beauty

• David’s fundamental problem was that he desired something that God forbidden.
• He stopped believing that the things God already gave him was enough

That’s what happens to all of us

• We stop being content in what God gave us and then we covet something else
• And that happens because we stop being obedient in the little things

Most affairs don’t start off with an affair

It’s a conversation that goes a little too far

Then a dinner together

Maybe it starts out by you watching stuff online that you shouldn’t

Then you eventually stop praying and spending time with the Lord because your shame has gotten the best of you

And all the sudden that look turns the corner and you find yourself somewhere you shouldn’t be

Listen, I am telling you this because David’s sin can be all of our sin if we aren’t killing sin before it metastisizes and kills you 

Like John Owens said. “You be killing sin or sin be killing you.”

 ³ And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam (Eli-um), the wife of Uriah the Hittite?”

In other words, David, this woman is somebody’s wife and daughter!

Y’all, whoever said this to David was trying to warn him

Not only was she somebody’s wife and daughter she was Uriah the Hittite’s wife

• If you recall in your Bible Uriah was one of David’s 30 valiant men of war
• His house would have been close to David’s because this was one of his people

Uriah was born a Hittite and somewhere along the way his parents converted to Judaism and changed his name to Yahweh is my light.

• He was a loyal friend and David is about to do the unthinkable with his wife

So, I want you to notice a couple things:

• David should have never been there– he should have been at war
• David should have stopped looking as soon as he noticed a woman naked (as a married man)
• David should have stopped the moment he knew who she was

But he doesn’t. He intentionally inquires about who she is and look what happens next.

 ⁴ So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned to her house. ⁵ And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”

Now, here’s the deal: I need to say this clearly– David is 100% responsible for his sins

• As the king of Israel and the power he possessed he had a responsibility to protect Bathsheba and no matter what he should have not crossed that line

But I do want to address Bathsheba for a second: By all accounts I believe that she knew exactly who David was and she most likely knew what she was doing.

David’s house would have been at the highest point in Jerusalem… The only thing higher would be the Temple

• Uriah’s home must have been pretty close to David’s given his position and she’s bathing naked outside.

Listen ladies– you are not responsible for someone else’s decision– full stop

• David cannot be let off the hook

But we do live in a world today where it’s easy to point the finger at someone else and not take personal holiness seriously

• How you dress and the decisions you make matter too

Y’all, she slept with David and purified herself– I don’t think that our modern world holds her accountable enough 

In our modern world it’s easy to have a victim mentality and I’m just saying that both sides have to assume responsibility for their sins and actions and I don’t see either of them doing that in this narrative

• She should have said no and she doesn’t

Anyway, We have to stop assuming that it’s the circumstances around us that are to blame for our wrong deeds. 

Here’s the truth: It’s from our our hearts that evil actions come.

• I know that’s hard to swallow but until we all say “woe is me” we will continue to repeat the same exact patterns of sin that David and Bathsheba committed.

Look at verse 4 again:  ⁴ So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned to her house. ⁵ And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”

Notice that it says she purified herself from her uncleanness.

According to the Levitical law, she would have had to cleanse herself before she could worship.

Y’all, I find this so telling because it’s exactly what so many of us will do.

We will have secret sins that we carry with us but we will still do the religious activities as if God doesn’t already know.

Listen to me: You cannot worship your way through your sins without repentance.

• You hear me?

This is the main reason that so many of you feel empty and cannot understand why you don’t feel close to God

• You are carrying something on the inside and all you are doing is cleaning up the outside

That’s what Bathsheba does

• Like, apparently she doesn’t want to break the Levitical law and upset God before going into worship 
• I mean, this is the definition of hypocrisy

The Apostle Paul said it best in Romans 12 when he said let love be genuine

• Literally without hypocrisy
• That word means without a mask
• Like you cannot live a double life 
• God already knows 

Listen: The natural tendency of the human heart is to try and cover sins with religious activities

• So we give more or serve more and we think that our hearts will change through behavioral modification

The reality is that only God can change the heart and he does that through confession and repentance

• 1 John 1 says that if we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us
• 2 Corinthians 5:17 says that when we are IN CHRIST we are a new creation
• And the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians is love, joy, peace, patients, kindness….
• Those are fruits that are the overflow of a changed life

V.6 ⁶ So David sent word to Joab, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent Uriah to David. ⁷ When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab was doing and how the people were doing and how the war was going.

Real quick: I want you to notice that word “so” that transitional word is huge because after David found out Bathsheba was pregnant he had a choice to make

• He could have chosen repentance 
• Instead he chooses to cover up his sins

Listen: one of the lessons I have continued to learn is life is that your sins will always find you out

If you cover your sins Jesus will expose them

If you expose your sins Jesus will cover them

So, he calls for Joab, his commander, and now he is about to use the people closes to him to protect himself

And I need you to see one more thing

• The more David tries to protect his reputation, the more he ends up destroying his character.

Listen y’all, I know it feels impossible but it is always easier to bring sin into the light and just deal with it.

 ⁸ Then 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. ⁹ But 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. ¹⁰ When 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?” ¹¹ Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field. Shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing.” ¹² Then 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. ¹³ And 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.

Here’s what gets me: Uriah is proving to have WAY more integrity than the king of God’s people.

Uriah comes home at the request of Joab, and honestly he’s confused. 

• He cannot understand why he’s enjoying life in Jerusalem when all his people are fighting to protect their home.
• Sound familiar?

This is exactly what David should have felt and been doing but he’s not.

So watch what David does: ¹⁴ In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah.

Y’all, he wrote Uriah’s death sentence and sent it back in his own hand.

Let me just tell you, this is the progression of covering up sins.

It started out as 

• Lust
• Then it led to adultery
• And instead of confession David tries entrapment
• Which ultimately leads to to murder

Listen: David sent away a righteous man to die for his sins.

Here’s the deal: We are all David

• All of our sins caused another righteous man to be sent away
• Except he voluntarily died for our sins

Which BTW is why it should be SO EASY for us to confess our sins because the price has already been paid.

Anyway: I need to say one more thing about Uriah before moving on.

Listen because this is important: Sometimes bad things happen to good people.

I know this isn’t easy but it is just true

• Sometimes the kid dies
• Sometimes the diagnosis comes
• Sometimes the marriage fails and he has an affair

Here’s what I need you to hear me say

• It’s not always your fault

Y’all, the world is broken and I honestly struggle with this as a pastor but I just know it’s true

Life isn’t fair and sometimes you just get the short end of the stick

• Listen, Uriah didn’t deserve this
• He was off serving the Lord and fighting in battle when his wife had an affair and he’s about to pay with his life for their cover up

I am just telling you

• If you are carrying the weight of something that has happened in your life you need to learn to let it go and realize it’s not your fault
• The inputs don’t always equal the out puts

You may have been a good parent and your kids still turned out rebellious

• And I know that you beat yourself up over it but please hear me, it’s okay to give yourself a break

Here’s the other thing: Joab is a terrible friend

Joab is about to help have Uriah killed because David told him to but what he should have done was stand up to David.

Proverbs 27: ⁶ Faithful are the wounds of a friend;

    profuse are the kisses of an enemy.

We need to be friends and surround ourselves with people who are willing to be friends because friends don’t let friends live in sin.

¹⁵ In 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.” ¹⁶ And as Joab was besieging the city, he assigned Uriah to the place where he knew there were valiant men. ¹⁷ And 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.

Notice that David is using everyone for his own purposes and there is collateral.

• Joab gets in a compromising position
• Uriah dies and so does other soldiers

Listen, sin always turns the people around you into objects to be controlled for your own satisfaction instead of people to be loved.

Isn’t that what happened? 

• David wanted Bathsheba, something God forbid so he treats her like an object to be taken
• Then David has to cover it up and he treated Uriah like an obstacle he has to eliminate
• Now he’s got to preserve his reputation and soldiers are dying in the process

Write this down: Sin doesn’t just change what we do. It changes how we see people.

• It’s what Volf said– we stop seeing people as human and we start seeing them as objects to be used

In verse 15 David knows exactly what he is doing, y’all. 

• He makes Uriah carry his own death warrant to cover up his own sin

Here’s what I know: It is so easy to blame our decisions on external factors instead of owning it for what it is

• David thought his problem was fatigue so he doesn’t go to war
• David thought his problem was unfilled desires so he takes another mans wife
• David thought his problem was pregnancy so he attempts to cover it up
• David thought his problem was Uriah so he has him killed

Listen, David’s problem was his HEART

• And just like David
• Until we address our real problem we aren’t going to actually receive healing

 ¹⁸ Then Joab sent and told David all the news about the fighting. ¹⁹ And he instructed the messenger, “When you have finished telling all the news about the fighting to the king, ²⁰ then, if the king’s anger rises, and if he says to you, ‘Why did you go so near the city to fight? Did you not know that they would shoot from the wall? ²¹ Who killed Abimelech the son of Jerubbesheth? Did not a woman cast an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died at Thebez? Why did you go so near the wall?’ then you shall say, ‘Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.’”

²² So the messenger went and came and told David all that Joab had sent him to tell. ²³ The messenger said to David, “The men gained an advantage over us and came out against us in the field, but we drove them back to the entrance of the gate. ²⁴ Then the archers shot at your servants from the wall. Some of the king’s servants are dead, and your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.” ²⁵ David said to the messenger, “Thus shall you say to Joab, ‘Do not let this matter displease you, for the sword devours now one and now another. Strengthen your attack against the city and overthrow it.’ And encourage him.”

Here’s one thing I know: Sin makes you stupid!

It makes you stop thinking about all the things that could go wrong and you justify it because you wanted something.

Example: Let me get personal for a second: 

Do you think that David had fun that night with Bathsheba? Seriously, it’s not a trick question.

• Of course he did

Y’all, sin is always fun– I am sure it was one of the best nights of his life but here’s the deal– he traded in a night of fun for a lifetime of misery.

That’s the thing about sin… It’s fun, for a moment

• But it rots your soul yall

I think about that a lot

• I don’t want my kids calling another man daddy and I can only imagine what fun night of doing something stupid would do to my life
• I’d lose my career
• I’d be paying child support
• My kids would probably hate me
• And then my girls would grow up with daddy issue

Listen, you have to think about those things because the human heart goes stupid in the moment and we always justify our sins

That’s exactly what David is doing

• No repentance
• No remorse

He’s gone so dumb that he’s actually trying to encourage Joab about the murder he just committed.

Listen: David’s one night with Bathsheba ruined his family

Destroyed his trust with his army

And killed his intimacy with God

Look at this: ²⁶ When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she lamented over her husband. ²⁷ And 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.

It displeased the Lord. BTW- that’s the central theme of the entire chapter. David’s sin displeased the Lord.

Here’s the thing about sin… You may be able to hide it from everyone in the world but God sees everything and the ultimate thing that’s at stake is your intimacy with the Lord.

Illustration: Let me just say this: I didn’t grow up in a Christian home. 

• The house I grew up in was broken
• My mother was addicted to drugs
• My father was abusive
• I am one of 13 kids from multiple marriages

When I went off to college I started walking with the Lord and I have been walking with the Lord for over 20 years now and I can tell you that the thing that sustains me and has changed my life is my intimacy with the Lord.

• I am here today because God has been kind to me
• The transformation of my family has nothing to do with me
• It’s only by God’s grace

And now that I am successful and have a great family it is really easy to believe the lie that I am where I am because of something I have done

And listen, what’s at stake is my relationship with the Lord.

Please don’t believe the lie that you can do this on your own. You can’t– you need the intimacy and relationship with the Lord to sustain you.

Now this: If you have messed up big time there is still more grace in God than sin in you and I need you to hear this– the only thing that stands in the way of your restoration with the Lord is your repentance.

Listen, in the very next chapter Nathan is going to confront David and David is going to repent

• He’s going to be restored and God is going to even use the sins of David and Bethsheba to bring Jesus into the world

God can take what Satan means for evil and use it for good– but you have to repent.

And when you do you get Jesus

• The greater David
• The son of God that uses his authority to serve instead of take
• The one who sacrificed himself for guilty people instead of sacrificing innocent people for himself
• The one who bears our sins to give us life instead of concealing sins

Listen, the thing at stake is your life yall because Jesus has done everything necessary to save you all you have to do is come back home and receive the grace he’s already purchased for you.