Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The Consequence of Confronting God | David in 22 | 2 Samuel 11

Starting point is 00:00:05 Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. Right now we're working through the story of David's life found in First and Second Samuel. If you're a grandparent of a college student, you need to ask for their syllabi. Why? Because a recent survey of college professors show that grandparents are 19 times more likely to die the night before an exam than any other time in the school year. Okay, so get those syllabi, find those exam dates, and make sure that you

Starting point is 00:00:40 stay inside and stay safe. No one has to teach us to lie, right? We see what we want, we justify the evil that we desire, we call it good, and then we take it. Don't bother me about the consequences. We just do it. We all do it, right? The primeval story of human sin actually follows this same pattern. In Genesis 3, Eve, she sees the free. that God told her not to eat. She calls the evil good, and then she takes it. In 2 Samuel 11, we read a similar story. One evening, David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof, he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful. And now the Hebrew word here for beautiful is Tove, which means good. Now, there's thick irony here because David saw the good,

Starting point is 00:01:32 but he's about to redefine good and evil. And David sent to someone to find out about her. The man said she is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, and the wife of Uriah, the Hittite. Then David sent messengers to take her. She came to him, and he slept with her. Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness. That tiny little aside is telling us something very important. It's telling us that Bathsheba, she's not on the roof bathing seductively.

Starting point is 00:02:02 to try and get David's attention. The bath she was doing was a ritual cleansing. She probably actually had her clothes on. And so David is standing on his roof, lusting after her during a religious ceremony. This is kind of like wanting to sleep with someone while you're watching them get baptized. The story continues.

Starting point is 00:02:22 Then she went back home. The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, I am pregnant. David starts plotting immediately. He brings her husband, Uriah, back from the military front. And he tries to get Yeraya to sleep with her. But he's so faithful. He says, like, I'm not going to sleep with my wife when everybody that is out there in the field fighting can't sleep with their wives.

Starting point is 00:02:45 I would never do that. David fails. He can't get him to sleep with Bathsheba. And so he has her husband, Uriah, the Hittite, killed in battle. In this story, we see the story of Adam and Eve repeated. They saw the fruit. They called the evil. they desired good and they took it. David sees Bathsheba and he makes the evil that he desires good

Starting point is 00:03:10 in his mind. And so he takes her sexually for himself. And just like Adam and E's first sin, this is really the turning point in David's life. As Walter Brugamond put it, he said, for David and for Israel, we are at the moment of no return. Innocence is never to be retrieved. From now on, the life of David is marked. So what's the mark on David? Well, there's lots of marks, we might say. It's the mark of selfish power. David uses his God-given authority as king to take what isn't his. He sexually abuses a woman and then he takes her husband's life. What's the mark on David? It's the mark of unruly human desire. King David isn't even the master of his own desires. He's mastered by his desire. What's the mark on David? It's the mark of redefinition. Good is evil in David's sight. And evil is good.

Starting point is 00:04:09 David has become the arbiter of his moral reality. Do you see yourself in the mirror in this story? I know I do. I mean, I don't do the exact same things, but I see these things in my heart. I mean, do you ever see those same marks on your heart? Have you ever used your power? Whatever it is, because we all have power in different ways. but have you ever used your power to take something that isn't yours? To take credit for something or to take more money, to take someone or something for your sexual pleasure, to take someone's reputation down to take, take, take, take, take for me. Have you ever been mastered by your desires? I think you know what I mean.

Starting point is 00:04:51 You know, when you find yourself swept up into the same sin that you said you would never do again, and when you get swept back into it, it's like you didn't even. choose it. It's like you've almost been forced to do it. Back into the lust, back into the addiction, back into the cutting words, back into the greed, back into the lies, back into the gossiping. Have you ever redefined good and evil in your life? Justified doing the wrong thing because, well, they deserved it, or because we tell ourselves that situation was just really complex, or because I had to do it to get by, or because everybody else was doing it. If you see these same things, these same marks in your heart, you can see that you've got an inheritance

Starting point is 00:05:36 from Adam and Eve, an inheritance from David. You've got the same feature that every other living human has except for Jesus, a broken and sinful nature. We've all got this internal predilection to rebel against God, to cast off his rule and his authority in our life, and to try and rule ourselves instead. And in this dark, stark story, the narrator, he's making a bold claim. He's asking us, he's saying, look, look at the world around you. Do you see the violence? Do you see the sexual abuse, the lies, the cover-ups? These things, all of them, they all spring from the same root, our sinful nature. This world can't be fixed unless that problem, that sinful nature problem, unless that problem is finally dealt with.

Starting point is 00:06:28 But how? How can we deal with this problem? Because the truth is, what we do in secret is never really in the dark. The last words in this chapter, they're ominous words, and they're trying to draw our attention to the fact that David isn't the only one who sees, that David isn't the only one who has his eyes open. This is the last verse. And the thing that David had done was evil in the sight.

Starting point is 00:06:55 of the Lord. God hates sin. He watches. He sees everything that David does to Bathsheba, everything that David does to Yariah, and he watches it with anger. And he's not less offended, by the way, about the things that we take, about the ways that we've been mastered by our desires, about the ways that we've redefined good and evil. We might say in our heads, well, I haven't done anything that bad, but it's just as bad before God. Do you see the terrible problem that God himself actually has to face. Because for him to be good, for him to be just, he has to destroy David. He has to do something about this. And yet, God's promised himself to David. God's promised to rescue David, to be faithful to David. God's promised himself to us too,

Starting point is 00:07:42 to be faithful to us in his love. So he can't destroy us. So how can God do it? How can God be faithful and loving and follow through on his promises and yet simultaneously be just, do the right thing, set things right, only through a perfect king. You see, this is why Jesus took our just punishment, the punishment that we deserve for our sins on the cross, so that God could justly punish sin, so that God could be just in the end. But Jesus didn't stop there. He invites us to turn away from those sins and to instead give our allegiance to him, our loyalty to him. He's inviting us to take off our crown of self-rule, to step aside from this mess that we've created and instead to come under his love, his justice, his mercy.

Starting point is 00:08:33 Today, I want to invite you to be honest before God. Tell him, I'm sin sick. I'm sin sick. We've all rebelled against God to become kings and queens over our. our own lives. We've turned God's world into a living hell, and now we're in a situation that we can't escape on our own. We are under the just condemnation of the living God. Be honest about it. But after you've been honest, remember, remember that Jesus has rescued you, as the Apostle Paul puts it, therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Paul says that our sin was judged in his flesh so that we can turn from that sin, give our allegiance to Jesus, and live for his kingdom. This is why Paul writes elsewhere, and he died for all, that those who live should no

Starting point is 00:09:28 longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised again. Today, get set free from your sin. Be honest about that sin sickness. Set aside your self-rule and give King Jesus your allegiance. Live for him. live for his kingdom. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily.

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Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The Consequence of Confronting God | David in 22 | 2 Samuel 11

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