Saga: The Story of David: The Power of Power
July 31, 2016
Dr. Tom Pace
II Samuel 12:1-4a, 7-10
Today we are continuing our series on the Saga of David, and today’s story is probably the second most familiar story in David’s life. The most familiar is the story of David and Goliath. This one is about David and Bathsheba. And it takes up the whole of chapters 11 and 12 of Second Samuel. We’re going to read a little piece of the first chapter which is the beginning of the story, and then the second reading from Second Samuel are the words of the Lord to David through the prophet Nathan. So let’s listen as we hear the Scripture read, and you can follow along in your bulletin.
In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem. It happened, late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful.David sent someone to inquire about the woman. It was reported, “This is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.”So David sent messengers to get her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. Nathan said to David, are the man! Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul;I gave you your master’s house, and your master’s wives into your bosom, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would have added as much more.Why have you despised the word of theLord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, for you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. (2 Samuel 12:7-10 NRVS)
O God, open us up. Open our eyes that we might see, and our ears that we might hear. Open our hearts that we might feel. And then, O Lord, open our hands that we might serve. Amen.
In our last episode of “Game of Thrones” here’s what we have. David has consolidated his power, and he’s now the king over the united kingdom of Judah and Israel, the southern and northern kingdoms of Israel. His rivals, Saul and Ish-Bosheth have both been defeated, and he has conquered Jerusalem from the Jebusites and established it as the capital of his kingdom. He’s brought the Ark of the Covenant into the city, and he has Jonathan’s son Mephibosheth part of his household. I mean everything is going right.
That’s when it gets dangerous. When everything turns to gold, when you touch it, then things seem to go wrong.
Our passage today begins with a very interesting phrase. It says, “In the spring of the year the times when kings go out to war, David sent Joab and all of Israel.” That means all his men went out to fight. They had surrounded the Ammonites so they had been fighting the Ammonites and surrounded the city of Rabbah, which is now Amman, Jordan. So it’s the capital of the Ammonite kingdom, about 45 miles from Jerusalem across the Jordan River. And they had besieged the city – surrounded the city.
So there wasn’t a lot of fighting left to do. All they had to do was wait until the city fell. Well, David didn’t go with them. He stayed home, and I love the phrase “on his couch.” Watching golf. Absolutely sure he was watching golf and eating Pringles as he sat there. And he got up and he looked out the window and he saw a young woman there – Bathsheba – and he inquired of her and the Scripture says, “He was told that she is the wife of Uriah the Hittite.”
Now here’s how that matters that he was Hittite. It means, the Hittites were a Canaanite people, that he was part of a conquered army. He had come over to the other side and was fighting for the Israelites now. He had defected if you will and was part of the Israelite army. And he was away at the siege.
And the Scripture says, “He sent for her and he lay with her.”
When I began to do this study for this year I found out something. I’ve preached on this passage a number of times before. But I had a new commentary this year that I’d never had before, and when I got to the part to get ready to start studying for this one, I saw the title of the chapter. This is both for 2 Samuel 11 and 12 – the title of the section was “The Rape of Bathsheba.”
That really kind of jarred me. I’d never thought of it that way. I’d always heard it as a story about adultery. But it makes the case very quickly on that it wasn’t like they worked together at night and then fell in love with each other. This was a king who sent for her, and she had no choice. He had all the power. All the power was David’s. He sent for her and he took her.
Well, she got pregnant, and that was going to be a political scandal for David. What was he going to do? Her husband was away at the front, and how could she be pregnant? The word would get out. So the cover up is often worse than the crime. We’ve learned that in the years we’ve watched television. The cover-up is worse than the crime.
So what he does is that he sends for Uriah from the front lines, and he’s got this brilliant idea. He says, “Uriah, you’ve been such a loyal soldier, why don’t you come home for a conjugal visit.”
Sounds like a good plan. But Uriah the Hittite is such a noble guy that he lies outside the door and says, “You know, if Joab and the other soldiers don’t get a conjugal visit, I won’t take one either.”
Oh, Uriah, Uriah! What a mistake? You know, I think you’re different than any other soldier I’ve ever met. But nonetheless, that didn’t fix it. So here’s what David does.
You remember they’re in a siege. They’re surrounding the city of Rabbah, and they’re waiting. David sends word to Joab, and he says, “I want you to attack the city, and I want you to

put Uriah on the very front lines.” So indeed that’s what they do. They attack the city. And hundreds of Israelite soldiers are killed. And in fact Uriah the Hittite is killed as well.
Funny, when the message comes back to King David about the casualties that were taken, he’s furious. He says, “How did that happen? Don’t you guys have any strategic brains at all? You’re going to go right up to the wall of the city and they rolled a rock down.” (The Scripture says literally that the women rolled a rock down over the wall and crushed the soldiers.) He said, “Why did you go right up to the wall? For what? Are you crazy?” And they got so close that the archers could hit them as they were getting ready to attack the city. And many soldiers died that way.
So he’s furious, and he’s ranting and raving to the messenger and telling him to go tell Joab what a terrible general he’s being. Then the messenger says, “Oh, by the way, Uriah the Hittite was killed, too.”
And David says, “Oh, well, you know, people just die in war sometimes. It’s just a hard thing.”
Ah, man! What a story.
So David thinks his problem is solved and it’s all a secret. No one will find out. No one knows. But the Lord knows. That’s always the case. The Lord knows. She knows. Ha! Ha! You’ve been teaching them well over there. That’s good. The Lord knows. I want you to have a good conversation with her about this story when you get done. It’s all about hats. I was so proud of Julie, what a good job!
So Nathan is the prophet, and the Lord sends him to talk to David. And he tells him a story. He says, “Hey, David, I just heard about this really rich man who had all the sheep and goats he wanted. And there was this really poor man next to him who had only one little ewe lamb. And a visitor was coming to town and the rich man wanted to make a feast for the visitor. And instead of using one of his sheep, he took that little ewe lamb from that other man. And he slaughtered it and served it.”
And David, being the king, says, “Who is this man? That’s terrible! That’s awful! Who is that man? He deserves to die!”
And Nathan says and it’s maybe the most famous line – “Thou art the man. It’s you, David. You’re that guy.”
Well, David repents and he’s forgiven. But there are consequences. There are always consequences. And he has to live with those consequences. The sword never departs from his home, his son Absalom revolts and rebels against him. We’ll deal with that next week. The child of Bathsheba becomes sick. David prays, and fasts and weeps, and confesses, and fasts, and weeps and prays and confesses, for seven days, praying that the child will be saved. But the child died.
Then there is this verse that is so profound. It says, “And David anointed his head. He washed his face, he changed his clothes, and he came out and ate.”
So what can we learn from this story? Well, this is a story about power. The power of power. This is a story about a king who can do whatever he wants, and he takes that power that he’s been given, and he abuses it.
If you go back to I Samuel 8 when the Israelites came to the prophet Samuel and say, “Hey, we want a king like everybody else has.” Samuel says, “You don’t want a king – God’s our king.” They tell him, “No, we want a king. All the other nations have kings, and we want a king, too.”
And the Lord says, “Okay, have a king. But here’s what I’ll tell you. He’s going to abuse you, he’s going take your land, he’s going to take your children, your sons and make them soldiers. He’s going to take your wives. He’s going to take the best of your vineyards. If that’s what you want, then I’ll give you a king.” And now David’s playing out that same part. He’s taking everything he wants.
Now I suppose we could stop there and make this a story about the abuse of power. What is it Lord Acton says? “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” We can make it a political story if we want. There’s probably some truth there. But I think we really miss the key point if we do that.
You say to yourself, “I’m no king – I don’t have all that kind of power.” You have more power than you could ever imagine. When God created you, God created you good. Just good, at the very core you are good. And then God gave you free will. That’s power. He said, “You can choose your life. You can choose good. You can choose evil. You can choose right, or you can choose wrong. You can choose love, you can choose hate. You can choose darkness, you can choose light. It’s your choice. It’s all your choice. You make that decision. You have that power.”
Now what are you going to do with it? And if anything else, this story is a snapshot of what it means to recognize that we are fallen creatures that when we are given the power, we are prone to choose the wrong. When we have the ability to choose right or wrong we are prone to choose ….
There’s that incredible hymn I hope we sing at my funeral, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” The hymn writer puts it this way: “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.”
We’re going to sing at the close of this service a hymn “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind,” which is from a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier. It’s about the strivings of our hearts and how we are prone to choose the wrong and asking for God to sort of stop us and quiet us so we can choose the right. It begins, “Dear Lord and Father of all mankind, forgive our foolish ways.” We are prone to choose the wrong when we have that choice in front of us.
So how do we live that way? How do we respond? Well, I very quickly want to take you through a few things that are there in the passage. I really don’t have time to develop them much, but I hope you’ll look at them and see how they jump out at you.
Here’s the first one. It begins with this simple statement that when the spring of the year came, and it was time for kings to go out for war, David stayed at home on his couch.
You’ve got to stay in your mission. You’ve got to keep going out to battle. We live in a world that has so many things that need to be fixed. And we have been called to be about God’s business of doing that fixing, to be in that wrestling match. We have to have a mission, a purpose. When our kids are small what we do if we’re smart and know they can get into trouble - so as they grow up we try to keep them really, really busy. So we’re going to have them in soccer, in volleyball, in the choir, in church and doing all sorts of things. It’s because we know that if they stop long enough and look out the window and see Bathsheba out there bad things may happen.
Let’s keep them on their mission. So when they get to be grown ups, we say, “Well, I’m kind of tired. I want to lay on my couch. I don’t want to be about anything anymore. I don’t have the fire that I used to have.” Then that’s when we get in trouble.
The great author G.K. Chesterton has a phrase I love. It’s a little sick, but it’s powerful. He says, “There is a time late in the day when children grow tired of their games. It is then that they take to torturing the cat.”
There’s a lot of truth to that. It’s when we grow tired of our mission and don’t go out to battle anymore, that’s when we get in trouble. Keep focused on our mission.
Here’s the second thing. I want you to think about all the consequences of David’s action. Untold number of soldiers die. Uriah dies. The sword never leaves his home. He has trouble with a revolt from within his own household, perhaps the death of his child, all the consequences of this incredibly impulsive act. If you read it, it’s so clear. He saw her; he sent for her, he lay with her.
It’s in here. Nathan sees him and says, “Why did you do this, David? Why did you do this?” And here’s the answer. It’s because he could. Because he had the power to do it, and so he did it.
When I was a kid and my dad was mad at me he would subject me to a verbal water torture. It went like this. He’d say, “Son, what were you thinking?” And I’d say, “Well, Dad, I don’t know what I was thinking?” He’d say, “Son, what were you thinking as you set the engine on fire?” I’d say, “Well, I don’t know…” Then he’d say, “Well, you had to be thinking something, son. What were you thinking? I want you to go back in your mind to when you made the decision to do that. What were you thinking?” Then I’d say, “Well, Dad, obviously I was not thinking. I was not thinking at all. If I’d been thinking I would not have lit the engine on fire obviously.”
Here’s the truth. I really wasn’t thinking. At some point you have to stop and think about the consequences of your actions.
I’ve been doing some reading about prison ministries around, and in one of them there’s a man in prison, and he’s talking about why he’s involved in this ministry to try and reach young men who are not yet in prison. Here’s what he writes: “I want other men to stop and think what it’s like to not be at your child’s graduation. To see the look in his eyes when he looks at you through that thick glass, to know how much you’ve let him down. What that does to your soul? I wish other men could see that and stop long enough to talk about the consequences.”
Here’s the third thing. Here’s what Nathan says to him; “I anointed you king over Israel. I rescued you from the hand of Saul. I gave you your master’s house. I gave you your master’s wives into your bosom. I gave you the house of Judah and of Israel, and if that had not been too little, I would have added as much more.” That’s what the Lord says.
At some point you’ve got to stop and realize how blessed you are. Sometimes I get to whining and complaining. I try not to whine and complain too publicly. My poor wife has to hear it more than anybody as I whine and complain. And then every once in a while in the midst of that, it’s like I have this moment when it becomes so clear to me how blessed I am. And I think, “Why am I so whiny? Where did that come from?”
So you picture the realization of all that God’s given you. That’s why prayer starts with thanksgiving. Because when we learn to live in gratitude - we’ll talk about this more in the next few weeks in our next two sermon series - but that is so important to begin our prayers with thanksgiving and learn to live in gratitude. And when we do that – man! It makes a difference.
Number four. You have to find some “Nathans,” some people who will hold up the mirror to you and say, “This is who you are? Do you see it? Do you see who you are?”
And it’s not done in an accusing sort of judgmental way, but that’s what the Bible does more than anything for me. I read this story and I begin, “Oh, my gosh, I’m David.” Or “Oh, my gosh, I’m Peter” who denies Christ. “Oh, my gosh, I’m James and John” who are arguing about who gets to sit at the right hand of Christ in the kingdom. I see myself in all these flawed creatures, and it’s like, “Aha!”
Someone was telling me that during the sermon there are lots of elbows. That’s Nathan next to you, friends! That’s you! And the truth is that as they’re saying it, they’re also saying, “Oh, that’s me, too. I’m looking in the mirror.”
The last one may be the most important, and I’m ashamed to save it, for not enough time. It says, “David washed his face, anointed his head, changed his clothes and came out.”
After his honest authentic confession and repentance, he refused to let his sin define him. He did not say from that point on, “I’m that adulterer. I’m that rapist. I’m that murderer. I’m that liar.” No, what he said was, “I’m a man after God’s own heart.”
Thomas Harper used a phrase in our Encounter service that I really like. He challenged the congregation after the sermon to “live into their redemption.” You’ve been forgiven, so don’t keep making that who you are. Yes, you live in regret.
I heard a Ted Talk this week from a woman who calls herself a “Wrongologist.” I love that phrase. It’s how do deal with things you’ve done wrong. And she says, “Yes, you regret, but then you take that regret, and then you move into something else.”
She tells the story of Johnny Depp who was engaged to Winona Ryder, and he had a tattoo put on his shoulder that said, “Winona forever.” Dangerous in Hollywood to put “Winona forever” on your shoulder.
It lasted three years which was a long time for Hollywood. So now it says, “Win forever.” That’s all. He got it corrected. He said, “I’m going to take the mistake that I made and I’m going to use it for something good. “Win Forever.”
So I’m going to tell you something. There have been times you’ve been Davids. You’ve used your power. And we’ve got to wake up and smell the coffee. It’s not that in the world there are good people and bad people, there are people. And we make mistakes. And we turn away from God.
But God doesn’t abandon us anymore than he abandoned David. And we’ll have to live with the consequences. There are always consequences. Things we do send ripples out that can hurt people in enormous ways. But God isn’t done with us yet.
Let’s pray. Lord God, forgive us, for we have abused the free will, the power that you have given us. And we have chosen the wrong when we could have chosen the right. We pray, God, that you would show us how to manage our lives in such a way that we might be more careful, that we might stop and think about the consequences, that we might stay focused on our mission and that we might live in gratitude with the Nathans that you put in our lives. And let us always remember that you never, never give up on us. In the name of Christ, Amen.