by Max Lucado
Odds are, David knew Uriah. The servant hopes to deftly dissuade the king. But David misses the hint. The next verse describes his first step down a greasy slope. “So David sent messengers to bring Bathsheba to him. When she came to him, he had sexual relations with her” (11:4 NCV).
David “sends” many times in this story. He sends Joab to battle (v. 1). He sends the servant to inquire about Bathsheba (v. 3). He sends for Bathsheba to have her come to him (v. 4). When David learns of her pregnancy, he sends word to Joab (v. 6) to send Uriah back to Jerusalem. David sends him to Bathsheba to rest, but Uriah is too noble. David opts to send Uriah back to a place in the battle where he is sure to be killed. Thinking his cover-up is complete, David sends for Bathsheba and marries her (v. 27).
We don’t like this sending, demanding David. We prefer the pastoring David, caring for the flock; the dashing David, hiding from Saul; the worshiping David, penning psalms. We aren’t prepared for the David who has lost control of his self-control, who sins as he sends.
What has happened to him? Simple. Altitude sickness. He’s been too high too long. The thin air has messed with his senses. He can’t hear as he used to. He can’t hear the warnings of the servant or the voice of his conscience. Nor can he hear his Lord. The pinnacle has
* * *
Linger too long at high altitudes,
and your hearing dulls and your eyesight dims.
* * *
dulled his ears and blinded his eyes. Did David see Bathsheba? No. He saw Bathsheba bathing. He saw Bathsheba’s body and Bathsheba’s curves. He saw Bathsheba, the conquest. But did he see Bathsheba, the human being? The wife of Uriah? The daughter of Israel? The creation of God? No. David had lost his vision. Too long at the top will do that to you. Too many hours in the bright sun and thin air leaves you breathless and dizzy.
Of course, who among us could ever ascend as high as David? Who among us is a finger snap away from a rendezvous with any-one we choose? Presidents and kings might send people to do their bidding; we’re lucky to send out for Chinese food. We don’t have that kind of clout.
We can understand David’s other struggles. His fear of Saul. Long stretches hiding in the wilderness. We’ve been there. But David high and mighty? David’s balcony is one place we’ve never been.
Or have we?
I wasn’t on a balcony, but I was on a flight. And I didn’t watch a woman bathe, but I did watch an airline attendant fumble. She couldn’t do anything right. Order soda, and she’d bring juice. Ask for a pillow, and she’d bring a blanket, if she brought anything at all.
And I started to grumble. Not out loud, but in my thoughts. What’s the matter with service these days? I suppose I was feeling a bit smug. I’d just been a guest speaker at an event. People had told me how lucky they were that I had come. I don’t know what was loonier: the fact that they said it or that I believed it. So I boarded the plane feeling cocky. I had to tilt my head to enter the doorway. I took my seat knowing the flight was safe, since heaven knows, I’m essential to the work of God.
Then I asked for the soda, the pillow. . . . She blew the assign-ments, and I growled. Do you see what I was doing? Placing myself higher than the airline attendant. In the pecking order of the plane, she was below me. Her job was to serve, and my job was to be served.
Don’t look at me like that. Haven’t you felt a bit superior to someone? A parking lot attendant. The clerk at the grocery store. The peanut-seller at the game. The employee at the coat check. You’ve done what I did. And we’ve done what David did. We’ve lost our sight and hearing.
When I looked at the airline attendant, I didn’t see a human being; I saw a necessary commodity. But her question changed all that.
“Mr. Lucado?” Imagine my surprise when the airline attendant knelt beside my seat. “Are you the one who writes the Christian books?”
Christian books, yes. Christian thoughts—that’s another matter, I said to myself, descending the balcony stairs.
“May I talk to you?” she asked. Her eyes misted, and her heart opened, and she filled the next three or four minutes with her pain. Divorce papers had arrived that morning. Her husband wouldn’t return her calls. She didn’t know where she was going to live. She could hardly focus on work. Would I pray for her?
I did. But both God and I knew she was not the only one needing prayer.
Perhaps you could use a prayer too? How is your hearing? Do you hear the servants whom God sends? Do you hear the conscience that God stirs?
And your vision? Do you still see people? Or do you see only their functions? Do you see people who need you, or do you see people beneath you?
The story of David and Bathsheba is less a story of lust and more a story of power. A story of a man who rose too high for his own good. A man who needed to hear these words: “Come down before you fall.”
“First pride, then the crash—the bigger the ego, the harder the fall” (Prov. 16:18 MSG).
This must be why God hates arrogance. He hates to see his children fall. He hates to see his Davids seduce and his Bathshebas be
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David and Bathsheba: less a story of lust
and more a story of power.
* * *
victimized. God hates what pride does to his children. He doesn’t dislike arrogance. He hates it. Could he state it any clearer than Proverbs 8:13: “I hate pride and arrogance” (NIV)? And then a few chapters later: “God can’t stomach arrogance or pretense; believe me, he’ll put those upstarts in their place” (16:5 MSG).
You don’t want God to do that. Just ask David. He never quite recovered from his bout with this giant. Don’t make his mistake. ’Tis far wiser to descend the mountain than fall from it.
Pursue humility. Humility doesn’t mean you think less of yourself but that you think of yourself less. “Don’t cherish exaggerated ideas
* * *
Humility doesn’t mean you think less of yourself
but that you think of yourself less.
* * *
of yourself or your importance, but try to have a sane estimate of your capabilities by the light of the faith that God has given to you” (Rom. 12:3 Phillips).
Embrace your poverty.We’re all equally broke and blessed. “People come into this world with nothing, and when they die they leave with nothing” (Eccles. 5:15 NCV).
Resist the place of celebrity. “Go sit in a seat that is not important. When the host comes to you, he may say, ‘Friend, move up here to a more important place.’ Then all the other guests will respect you” (Luke 14:10 ncv).
Wouldn’t you rather be invited up than put down?
God has a cure for the high and mighty: come down from the mountain. You’ll be amazed what you hear and who you see. And you’ll breathe a whole lot easier.
16
COLOSSAL COLLAPSES
WHAT WILL THE Vatican give for the pope’s name? Rogers Cadenhead sought an answer. Upon the death of Pope John W Paul, this self-described “domain hoarder” registered www.BenedictXVI.com before the new pope’s name was announced. Cadenhead secured it before Rome knew they needed it.
The right domain name can prove lucrative. Another name, www.PopeBenedictXVI.com, surpassed sixteen thousand dollars on E-bay. Cadenhead, however, didn’t want money. A Catholic himself, he’s happy for the church to own the name. “I’m going to try and avoid angering 1.1 billion Catholics and my grandmother,” he quipped.
He would like something in return though. In exchange, Caden-head sought
1. “one of those hats”;
2. “a free stay at the Vatican hotel”;
3. “complete absolution, no questions asked, for the third week of March 1987.”1
Makes you wonder what happened that week, doesn’t it? It may remind you of a week of your own. Most of us have one, or more.
A folly-filled summer, a month off track, days gone wild. If a box of tapes existed documenting every second of your life, which tapes would you burn? Do you have
a season in which you indulged, imbibed, or inhaled?
King David did. Could a collapse be more colossal than his? He seduces and impregnates Bathsheba, murders her husband, and deceives his general and soldiers. Then he marries her. She bears the child.
The cover-up appears complete. The casual observer detects no cause for concern. David has a new wife and a happy life. All seems well on the throne. But all is not well in David’s heart. Guilt simmers. He will later describe this season of secret sin in graphic terms:
When I kept it all inside,
my bones turned to powder,
my words became daylong groans.
The pressure never let up;
all the juices of my life dried up. (Ps. 32:3–4 MSG)
David’s soul resembles a Canadian elm in winter. Barren. Fruit-less. Gray-shrouded. His harp hangs unstrung. His hope hibernates. The guy is a walking wreck. His “third week of March” stalks him like a pack of wolves. He can’t escape it. Why? Because God keeps bringing it up.
Underline the last verse of 2 Samuel chapter 11: “The thing that David had done displeased the Lord” (v. 27). With these words the narrator introduces a new character into the David and Bathsheba drama: God. Thus far, he’s been absent from the text, unmentioned in the story.
David seduces—-no mention of God. David plots—no mention of God. Uriah buried, Bathsheba married—no mention of God. God is not spoken to and does not speak. The first half of verse 27 lures the reader into a faux happy ending: Bathsheba “became David’s wife and gave birth to his son” (ncv). They decorate the nursery and pick names out of a magazine. Nine months pass. A son is born. And we conclude: David dodged a bullet. Angels dropped this story into the file marked “Boys will be boys.” God turned a blind eye. Yet, just when we think so and David hopes so . . . Some-one steps from behind the curtain and takes center stage. “The thing that David had done displeased the Lord.”
God will be silent no more. The name not mentioned until the final verse of chapter 11 dominates chapter 12. David, the “sender,” sits while God takes control.
God sends Nathan to David. Nathan is a prophet, a preacher, a White House chaplain of sorts. The man deserves a medal for going to the king. He knows what happened to Uriah. David had killed an innocent soldier . . . What will he do with a confronting preacher?
Still, Nathan goes. Rather than declare the deed, he relates a story about a poor man with one sheep. David instantly connects. He shepherded flocks before he led people. He knows poverty. He’s the youngest son of a family too poor to hire a shepherd. Nathan tells David how the poor shepherd loved this sheep—holding her in his own lap, feeding her from his own plate. She was all he had.
Enter, as the story goes, the rich jerk. A traveler stops by his mansion, so a feast is in order. Rather than slaughter a sheep from his own flock, the rich man sends his bodyguards to steal the poor man’s animal. They Hummer onto his property, snatch the lamb, and fire up the barbecue.
As David listens, hair rises on his neck. He grips the arms of the throne. He renders a verdict without a trial: fish bait by nightfall. “The man who has done this shall surely die! And he shall restore fourfold for the lamb, because he did this thing and because he had no pity” (12:5–6).
Oh, David. You never saw it coming, did you? You never saw Nathan erecting the gallows or throwing the rope over the beam. You never felt him tie your hands behind your back, lead you up the steps, and stand you squarely over the trap door. Only when he squeezed the noose around your neck, did you gulp. Only when Nathan tightened the rope with four three-letter words:
“You are the man!” (12:7).
David’s face pales; his Adam’s apple bounces. A bead of sweat forms on his forehead. He slinks back in his chair. He makes no defense. He utters no response. He has nothing to say. God, how- ever, is just clearing his throat. Through Nathan he proclaims:
I made you king over Israel. I freed you from the fist of Saul. I gave you your master’s daughter and other wives to have and to hold. I gave you both Israel and Judah. And if that hadn’t been enough, I’d have gladly thrown in much more. So why have you treated the word of God with brazen contempt, doing this great evil? You murdered Uriah the Hittite, then took his wife as your wife. Worse, you killed him with an Ammonite sword! (12:7–9 MSG)
God’s words reflect hurt, not hate; bewilderment, not belittlement. Your flock fills the hills. Why rob? Beauty populates your palace. Why take from someone else? Why would the wealthy steal? David has no excuse.
So God levies a sentence.
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.
This is what the Lord says: “Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity upon you. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight. You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel.”
(12:10.12 niv)
From this day forward, turmoil and tragedy mark David’s family. Even the child of this adultery will die (12:18). He must. Surrounding nations now question the holiness of David’s God. David had soiled God’s reputation, blemished God’s honor. And God, who jealously guards his glory, punishes David’s public sin in a public fashion. The infant perishes. The king of Israel discovers the harsh truth of Numbers 32:23: “. . . you can be sure that your sin will track you down” (MSG).
Have you found this to be true? Does your stubborn week of March 1987 hound you? Infect you? Colossal collapses won’t leave us alone. They surface like a boil on the skin.
* * *
Can God sit idly as sin poisons his children?
* * *
My brother had one once. In his middle school years he contracted a case of the boils. Poisonous pus rose on the back of his neck like a tiny Mount St. Helens. My mom, a nurse, knew what the boil needed—a good squeezing. Two thumbs every morning. The more she pressed, the more he screamed. But she wouldn’t stop until the seed of the boil popped out.
Gee, Max, thanks for the beautiful image.
I’m sorry to be so graphic, but I need to press this point. You think my mom was tough . . . Try the hands of God. Unconfessed sins sit on our hearts like festering boils, poisoning, expanding. And God, with gracious thumbs, applies the pressure:
The way of the transgressor is hard. (Prov. 13:15 asv)
Those who plow evil and sow trouble reap evil and trouble. ( Job 4:8 MSG)
God takes your sleep, your peace. He takes your rest. Want to know why? Because he wants to take away your sin. Can a mom do nothing as toxins invade her child? Can God sit idly as sin poisons his? He will not rest until we do what David did: confess our fault. “Then David said to Nathan, ‘I have sinned against the Lord.’ Nathan replied, ‘The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die’” (2 Sam. 12:13 NIV).
* * *
God will not rest until we do what David did: confess our fault.
* * *
Interesting. David sentenced the imaginary sheep stealer to death. God is more merciful. He put away David’s sin. Rather than cover it up, he lifted it up and put it away. “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him” (Ps. 103:12–13 NIV).
* * *
Place your mistake before the judgment seat of God.
Let him condemn it, let him pardon it, and put it away.
* * *
It took David a year. It took a surprise pregnancy, the death of a soldier, the persuasion of a preacher, the probing and pressing of God, but David’s hard heart finally softened, and he confessed: “I have sinned against the Lord” (2 Sam. 12:13).
And God did with the sin what he does with yours and mine—he put it away.
It’s time for you to put your “third week of March 1987” to rest. Ass
emble a meeting of three parties: you, God, and your memory. Place the mistake before the judgment seat of God. Let him condemn it, let him pardon it, and let him put it away.
He will. And you don’t have to own the pope’s name for him to do so.
17
FAMILY MATTERS
DAVID LOOKS OLDER than his sixty-plus years. His shoulders slump; his head hangs. He shuffles like an old man. He struggles D to place one foot in front of the other. He pauses often. Partly because the hill is steep. Partly because he needs to weep.
This is the longest path he’s ever walked. Longer than the one from creekside to Goliath. Longer than the winding road from fugitive to king or the guilty road from conviction to confession. Those trails bore some steep turns. But none compare with the ascent up the Mount of Olives.
So David went up by the ascent of the Mount of Olives, and wept as he went up; and he had his head covered and went bare- foot. And all the people who were with him covered their heads and went up, weeping as they went up. (2 Sam. 15:30)
Look carefully and you’ll find the cause of David’s tears. He wears no crown. His son Absalom has taken it by force. David has no home. Those walls rising to his back belong to the city of Jerusalem. He flees the capital he founded.
Who wouldn’t weep at a time like this? No throne. No home. Jerusalem behind him and the wilderness ahead of him. What has happened? Did he lose a war? Was Israel ravaged by disease? Did famine starve his loved ones and drain his strength? How does a king end up old and lonely on an uphill path? Let’s see if David will tell us. See how he responds to two simple questions.