Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How David Saw Bathsheba | Historical Books | 2 Samuel 11

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

Do you saunter? How does your perception of the world shape how you act? Are your desires pure? In today's episode, Patrick shares how 2 Samuel 11 encourages us to see the world as God does: charged with his glory. If you're listening on Spotify, tell us about yourself and where you're listening from! Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 2 Samuel 11

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. An older, wiser friend of mine named Steve Garber is a brilliant thinker and Christian author. He's also a student of the great American naturalist, John Muir. He explained to me that Muir didn't believe in hiking. And be honest, that kind of surprised me since Muir was famous for hiking and protecting the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

But my friend, Steve, explained to me that, according to me, According to Mir, hiking is simply walking through a place. To hike a spot is to see it as a destination or a throughway. But from here, nature was something deeper. He said that we should see every place as God's place, as holy ground. Or in the Spanish language, Saint-Holy, a place, a place, saunteray. And so he liked to joke that he was sauntering because it sounded the same. And he passed through nature aware of it saintly. holy, sacred dimension. Now, Mir wasn't a scholar of the English language, but a similar connection exists there. The English word saunter comes from the Middle English word santran, which means to muse or to be in a reverie. We tend to imagine someone sauntering is someone coolly and aloofly walking through the world. But a true saunter is not aloof to its surroundings. To truly saunter is to pay careful attention to the deep glory in things, to see reflections of God in the flower, in the meadow, the mountain in the valley, the bluff in the river, to saunter is to

realize that the world is thin, and sometimes the spiritual realm breaks in, charging every atom with the glory of God. My friend Steve shared that he was recently sauntering through a redwood forest, and he wondered what it would be like to see as mere saw, to see all ground as sacred ground. He wrote to me, Would that we have eyes to see the whole, ground that is ours. Our relationships and responsibilities woven into the hours and days that become the vocations of our lives, our work and worship, becoming more seamless, being human and being holy, the deep longing of our hearts. If only we could saunter through life, seeing the whole of life as a single tapestry woven into the grand story of God. If only we could saunter through

our time with family and our time with friends and see that each of them is a glorious creature. made in the image of God, imbued with inimitable dignity and worth. If only our deepest longing was to see God's holiness in all things and seek that holiness in all things so that we would always be in his will and near his voice. If only, I say, because none of us saunter that way through the whole of life. Even in the Garden of Eden, standing before the tree, Eve saw the tree. She perceived the tree wrongly. It wasn't that she was hiking, but she certainly wasn't sauntering. She couldn't see the holy and the true. You see, she didn't saunter in the garden. She simply walked and quietly ripped it from the

tapestry of God's purpose in the world. Remember, to saunter is to see the world in a particular way. And the author of Genesis subtly highlights that E's first mistake was indeed seeing wrongly. The serpent takes her to a tree God forbid her to eat from. And the serpent promises, that its fruit are not only delicious, but it will make her as wise as God. The author of Genesis shows that this deception changed how Eve saw the tree, her perception of the tree, and that change in perception, well, it in turn changed her heart, her desires, which then in turn changed her behavior. We read this in Genesis 3.6. When the woman saw, so there's perception, when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food,

and also pleasing to the eye and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some of it and ate. Now we must pay attention to three words in this passage because they're repeated throughout the Old Testament. It's the words saw, desirable, and took. So first Eve saw. In other words, the way she saw the fruit suddenly changed because of the serpent's lie, instead of seeing it as a dangerous risk that must be resisted because she trusted. in the goodness of God, suddenly that fruit became desirable. And that's our second word. The fruit was desirable or beautiful. This tells us that Eve's mind wasn't just changed. It wasn't just her perception

of reality. Because of her perception of reality changed, her heart was changed also. How she saw the world drove what she loved in the world. And in this moment, her loves become disordered. Because now she wants, she desires a fruit more than God. And lastly, the passage says that she reached out and took. She took it. So now Eve acts to take what she desires. So do you see the big pattern? Changes in perception, change our desire, which changes our action, what we take. Today's passage in 2 Samuel 11, it's one of the most tragic stories in the life of David. And I'd encourage you to read the entire passage after listening, but here's a brief synopsis. David does not go out to war with his warriors. Said he stays at home and left at home board. He spies a woman on her roof,

cleansing herself from ceremonial uncleanness. And she does this by taking a bath. Likely her clothes were on, and this implies that she wasn't trying to seduce David. She was simply trying to be faithful to God's law and cleanse herself after her period. Now, David eventually brings her into his chamber and he sleeps with her. And throughout the whole thing, David is the actor while Bathsheba, the woman, is the passive recipient of his action. We get the sense that there was no way for her to say no, at the very least that she's not much of an agent in this story. Bathsheba is eventually impregnated by David, which complicates things because her husband, Uriah, the Hittite, he's off at war. And so David brings Uriah back, hoping that if he does so, he'll go back home and sleep with Bashiba and thus cover up David's sin.

But Uriah, who's a foreigner, by the way, is such a stand-up guy. He's so good at walking in the way of Yahweh that he refuses to go to his wife while his compatriots are off fighting. He's a man of character. So the irony is that the foreigner, the Hittite, is more righteous than Israel's king. And so David responds by commanding Uriah to the front so that Uriah would be murdered and more. Tomorrow will hear God's assessment of what happened in the story and will learn the conclusion of this story, but for now I want to focus on one particular passage because it echoes the story of Eve in the Garden. The author is using the same language. We read this in 2 Samuel 11. 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 desirable. And David sent and inquired about the woman. And he was told, is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of a lyam, the wife of Yeriah, the Hittite? So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him and he lay with her. Did you hear the same pattern? David saw, his perception changed, that she was desirable, now his heart is changed, and therefore he took her. It's the exact same pattern. The passage, by the way, goes out of its way to clarify again that Bathsheba, was not seducing him. Now she was cleansing herself as the law required. We read this in verse four.

Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness. The warning here is for all of us, because we are all like David. How do we see the world? And how does that shape our desires? And how do those desires end up shaping our actions? Do we see the world as a universe for our taking, for our pleasure, for our sinful fulfillment? Or do we see as John Mears saw? The world is a place to saunter to see the holiness and glory of God in all things. Will men who follow Jesus see daughters of God as image bearers? Or will they allow their perception to be corrupted? Will they see them as sexual objects as things to be desired and then to take? Of course, we can ask women the same question. Jesus came to earth to create a revolution in human perception,

to free us from the chains of sinful sight and begin to see the world as God does, charged with his glory and his grandeur. So confess your sinful perception of reality to God and let His spirit renew your sight.