This episode sheds light on one of the most profound stories within the Bible, the fall of David and subsequent events that unfolded. We unravel the narratives from the book of 2 Samuel, examining the indiscretions of David, his confrontation with the prophet Nathan, and the subsequent mourning and atonement. Listeners will gain insight into the ramifications of David’s actions on his personal and public life, especially how it affected his relations with God and his nation. We also delve into Solomon’s consequential birth, a pivot from tragedy to triumph, illustrating the complexities of leadership, morality, and divine justice.
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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It’s always painful to see a good man fall. And the affair of David and Bathsheba, well, that’s pretty much what happened. It happened to a good woman at the same time. And I wonder if when King Solomon sat down to write the book of Ecclesiastes, and he thought about this, because in the 10th chapter he said, dead flies cause the ointment of the perfumery to send forth a stinking savor. So does a little folly, him that is in reputation for wisdom and honor. And he had a classic example of this in his own mother and father. This affair is loaded with lessons to be learned and questions to be answered. Someone once said, power corrupts. And at the time this happened, David was at the absolute peak of his power, his influence, and his popularity. There seems to be a sense of invincibility that comes over powerful men at times. They come to think they’re above the law. They think they can get away with things ordinary men can’t get away with. After all, they are not ordinary. But in David’s case, this is singularly stupid. He had a covey of wives, and some of them I’m sure are quite beautiful. And if they had not been enough, there was the entire flower of Judean womanhood before him. He didn’t have to take another man’s woman. Girls would have lined up to be David’s concubines, and he could have taken his pick. So why did he take another man’s wife? What on earth was he thinking? The answer is easy. He wasn’t thinking. He saw. He wanted. He took. And if it hadn’t been for one small problem, he might have gotten away with it. But Bathsheba was pregnant. Her husband was away at war. There was no way to cover this up now. Now, goodness knows David tried. He brought her husband home from the front in the full expectation he’d sleep with his wife and then believe the child was his own, even if it was only a little bit early. What David didn’t count on was that her husband was a leader. and a man of honor. He would not go home and sleep with his wife in a house while his men camped out in the open field. His men might never know, but he would know, and his self-respect would not allow it. So there was nothing left for it but to arrange for her husband to die in battle. David could manage that, and he became guilty not only of adultery, but of murder as well. Worse, there was no way to cover this up. They may not have had CNN or Fox News, but word of these things always gets out. You know the old joke, telephone, telegraph, tell a woman. But it isn’t just women. Men are as good at it as women any day. Gossip, rumor, it all spreads. Now, for just a moment, let’s see if we can look at this from another point of view, that of David’s God. David is called a man after God’s own heart. He had been a man of extraordinary faith and courage. When it came to going to battle, he always asked God, Shall we go up and fight or shall we stay home? And God would tell him to go or to stay. And he had absolute confidence in God. And God loved David. He blessed him and supported him at every turn because the things he was doing were good for Israel. And even though some of his neighbors didn’t think so, it was good for the world around Israel. The disappointment over this sin on God’s part must have been heartbreaking. So God asked himself, what shall I do about David? Shall I dump him like I did Saul? Well, he’s a better man than Saul by a very wide margin. Rejecting him could do a lot of damage to the people and to the nation, and much that I’ve been doing would come apart. Now God might have concluded that he must take steps to determine finally what kind of a man he was dealing with. Because when you have really screwed up big, what you do next is the most important thing of all. So we return to the story at the end of 2 Samuel chapter 11. When the wife of Uriah heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for her husband and And when the morning was past, David sent and fetched her to his house. She became his wife and bare him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord. And I would have thought David would know that. I would have thought that would have been the first thing that crossed his mind. As close as he was to God, as obedient as he was, the man of faith that he was, you would think somewhere in the course of all this thing he would have said, no, no, God’s going to be very angry about this. So now follows the next step, the next action that God will take. The Lord sent Nathan to David. This is 2 Samuel 12. And Nathan came to David and said, There were two men in one city, one rich, the other poor. The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds. The poor man had nothing. Oh, he had one little ewe lamb that he had brought up and nourished up. He grew up together with him and with his children. It did eat of his own food, drank right out of his own cup, and it would even sleep in his bed with him. And it was to him like a daughter. It sounds like my dog, maybe yours. But then there came a traveler to the rich man. And he was so stingy, he wouldn’t take anything out of his own flock and his own herd to kill and dress and prepare for the wayfaring man that was come to him. No, no. He took the poor man’s lamb and dressed it for the man who was come to him. It would be an absolutely infuriating thing to do. And David was furious. His anger was greatly kindled against this man. He said to Nathan, As the Lord lives, the man that has done this thing shall surely die. He shall restore the lamb fourfold because he did this thing and because he had no pity. No feeling, no compassion, no understanding of what this would mean to somebody else. David could see what that meant. Then Nathan said to David, You’re the man. Now this is brutal. There is no sugarcoating here. You’re the man. Thus says the Lord of Israel, I anointed you king over Israel. I delivered you out of the hand of Saul. I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your bosom. I gave you the house of Israel and of Judah, and if that had not been enough, it’s too little, I would have given you more and more. Why then have you despised the commandment of the Lord to do evil in his sight? You have killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon. Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. Now note what came first in that. You have despised me. He didn’t start off by talking about the sin. He started off with David’s contempt for God. Oh, surely David didn’t have contempt for God, did he? Well, he didn’t think he did. But his actions showed an utter, callous disregard for the relationship he had with God. Thus says the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house, and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of the sun. You did it secretly. I’m going to do this thing before all Israel and in broad daylight before the sun. Now it had to be done so. God could not allow his king to get away with this or be seen or assumed to have gotten away with it. Anything that just looked like he was getting away with it would have been a terrible mistake for the governance of God’s people. Now, what does David respond? How does David react to this belly blow that he just got from Nathan? Because Nathan set it up so that David’s wrath, his anger, was totally against this man who had done this wicked thing, only to find out that in God’s eyes, he was the man. We’ll talk about David’s response. But first, grab a pencil and a piece of paper. I want to give you an address and a phone number.
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What do you do when you reach the end of your rope? The old joke is that you tie a knot in the end and hang on. There may be more to that old saying than you think. Write for a free copy of a message called Staying Power. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE44. And tell us the call letters of this radio station.
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It’s a terrible moment. when you come to yourself like David had to on this occasion, and when he had finally absorbed what Nathan had said and had himself under control, he said, I have sinned against the Lord. He said a lot more than that in his heart, and he also said more than that in a psalm he would write not long after this when he had time to be alone. And if this I have sinned had not come from the heart, what followed would have been quite different. Nathan said to David, The Lord also has put away your sin, you shall not die. How be it? Because by this deed you have given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme. The child that is born unto you shall surely die. It seems awfully harsh in a way. But notice what the problem was. It wasn’t just that David had broken one of God’s rules that God could just simply overlook it if he chose to do it. He said, by this deed, you have given great occasion to the enemies of God to blaspheme. And surely that was true. I mean, word about this kind of thing would go everywhere. And there was no way this child could have been left in the lineage of David to become a king, to have an illegitimate child born of this relationship in line to the throne. Because as time would have it and the circumstances would have it, the next child born to Bathsheba would be Solomon, who would be the greatest king in Israel’s history. That couldn’t be done by this boy born this way. Well, the child, after Nathan departed, became sick. And David therefore besought God for the child. And David fasted and went in and lay all night upon the ground. The elders of his house arose and went to him to raise him up from the earth, but he wouldn’t have it, neither would he eat bread with them. It came to pass on the seventh day, seven days he didn’t eat anything, that the child died. And the servants of David were afraid to tell him. They said, behold, the child was alive. We spoke to him. He would not listen to our voice then. What’s going to happen if we tell him the child is dead? And David saw his servants whispering, and he perceived what it meant that the child had died. So he asked his servants, is the child dead? And they said, yes, he’s dead. So David got up from the ground, washed, anointed himself, changed his apparel, and came into the house of the Lord and worshipped. Only after that did he come to his own house, and when he asked for it, they set bread before him, and he ate. Now, I think we need to think about this. After his time of repentance, he did not hide or withdraw from God. It is a temptation when we have sinned, even when we’ve said we’re sorry, even when we wish we hadn’t done it, even when we have repented and all this, to still feel bad and to back away and to hide out and not want to show our face. It’s a terrible mistake. If we have repented, we should return all the way to God. just like David did. When his repentance was finished, when his pleading with God was over, he washed himself, cleaned himself up, and went right straight to the house of God and worshipped there. When his servant said to him afterward, ìWe donít understand what youíve done. You fasted and wept for the child while it was alive, but when the child was dead, you rose and ate.î He said, While the child was still alive, I fasted and I wept, for I said, Who can tell whether God will be gracious to me that the child may live? Because God in the past has been known to pronounce sentence and then relent. But now David said he is dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me. Simple thought. We are all headed the same place that child and later David would go. And David said, I can’t. Nothing I can do is going to bring him back. At some point in this terrible time, David wrote the 51st Psalm. It’s a marvelous example of a repentant man’s prayer to God. Psalm 51 is called the Psalm of David, and it identified in the superscription that it’s when Nathan the prophet came to him after he had gone in to Bathsheba. And in this great psalm, David prays, Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your lovingkindness, according to the multitude of your tender mercies. Blot out my transgressions. It’s an interesting choice of words here because the writing of sin in a book and then blotting it out with water is an image that arises from the trial of jealousy in the law. He said then, Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity. Cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Yeah, it’s true. And it will never go away. It will always be a part of us when we have sinned. It’s a funny thing. You think, well, doesn’t God say that he will forgive completely and that our sins and our iniquities he will remember no more? Oh, sure. He will never remember them. But that doesn’t mean that we won’t. It doesn’t mean that we won’t carry around the scars. It doesn’t mean that we won’t carry around the memory of them, the embarrassment, the shame of what we have done. And from time to time, in the dark hours of the night, these things will come home to us with a shiver, and we realize where we could be instead of where we are. David says, My sin is ever before me. And in fact… the sin and the repentance coupled together become a part of who we are forever. Against you, you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight, that you may be justified when you speak and clear when you judge. There is no hint that David thought God’s judgment was in any way unjust. He just says, I know that you are right. I know that what you have done here is right. And he doesn’t try to shluff this off as saying what was merely a sin against Uriah or merely a sin against Bathsheba. He said it was a sin against you. And that’s the one thing I can’t stand. Behold, I was shaped in iniquity. In sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, now you desire truth in the inward part, and in the hidden part you’re going to make me no wisdom. Look, what God wants from us is truth inside. The first step is to tell the truth to yourself. And that’s what David wants. And as he puts this, I was shaped in iniquity and sin did my mother conceive me. Don’t make too much of that because what David is doing here poetically is saying, I have been a sinner from the start. I am sinful from all the way through. It is not just an outer shell. I can’t say that the sin is not the real me because it is the real me. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me hear joy and gladness, so that the bones which you have broken may rejoice. Hide your face from my sins. Blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Comes a point in time where this is the only way that it can be done. We can’t sort this out. We can’t go to the psychiatrist’s couch and tell him all about how much we hated our mother and the various and sundry things they want to know and sort out some of this stuff. What is needed is for God to create inside of us a clean heart and to renew a right spirit within us. Don’t cast me away from your presence. Don’t take away your Holy Spirit from me. Which is interesting, by the way. David had God’s Holy Spirit. Restore unto me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with your free spirit. Ah, then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will be converted to you. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, you God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth your praise.” For you desired not sacrifice, I’d give it. You don’t delight in burnt offering, I’d do that. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a crushed heart. O God, you will not despise. When you bring the broken spirit and the crushed heart before God, he will not look down on you. Do good in your good pleasure to Zion. Build the walls of Jerusalem. Then shall you be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering, with whole burnt offering. And then they can offer bullocks upon your altar. And so David, in this dark hour of his life, came to be a better man. We’ll come back to the rest of this story right after this important message.
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Or call toll-free 1-888-BIBLE44. And tell us the call letters of this radio station.
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And David comforted Bathsheba, his wife, and went in unto her and lay with her. And she bare a son. And David called his name Solomon. And the Lord loved him. God does not stay angry forever. He will put our sins behind us. And even though we bear the pain with us for some time to come, God’s love… doesn’t go away. And it’s only at this time, by the way, that Bathsheba really is called David’s wife. While she was bearing the first child, she was bearing the child as the wife of Uriah. And God sent by the hand of Nathan the prophet, and he called the name of the boy Jedidiah because of Yahweh, or Jehovah. The I-A-H on the end of all those biblical names is Yah, or the first section of the name Jehovah. Joab then fought against Rabah of the children of Ammon, and he took the royal city. And Joab sent messengers to David and said, I’ve fought against Rabba, I’ve taken the city of waters, now gather the rest of the people together and camp against the city and take it, lest I take the city and be called after my name. So David gathered all the people together and began to finally at long last tend to business again. He went to Rabba, fought against it, and took it. He took their king’s crown from off his head, the weight whereof was a talent of gold with all the precious stones. And it was set on David’s head, and he brought forth the spoil of the city in great abundance. He brought out all the people in it and set them to work with saws and iron picks and iron axes, or he sent them to work in the brickworks. This did he to all the cities of the Ammonites. And then David and all the people returned to Jerusalem. Then follows… A tragic event in the royal household. And you have to just kind of realize that whenever people are so privileged, when they are so far above and apart from the ordinary man, when every wish, every will of theirs is fulfilled, they do begin to lose track of what’s important. 2 Samuel 13. It came to pass after this that Absalom, the son of David, had a fair sister whose name was Tamar. And Amnon, the son of David, loved her. Aye, oh, we’ve got a problem. Here we have a man in love with his half-sister. And this is a completely self-centered, self-indulgent young man. Spoiled rotten, no doubt, as is too often the case with royalty. The girl was his half-sister. He had no business pursuing her. Unrequited love is painful, but it is not fatal. Amnon was so vexed that he fell sick for his sister Tamar, for she was a virgin, and Amnon thought it hard for him to do anything to her. But he had a friend. Friend’s name was Jonadab. Actually, he was a cousin. He was the son of Shimea, David’s brother. And he was a very subtle man. He said to him, why are you being the king’s son haggard from day to day? What is this all about? Aren’t you going to tell me? And Amnon told him, I love Tamar, my brother Absalom’s sister. And Jonadab said, Hey, lay down on your bed. Make yourself out to be sick. And when your father comes to see you, say to him, Oh, I beg you, let my sister Tamar come and prepare me something to eat while I can watch that I can see it and eat it at her hand. So he did it. He lay down, made himself sick. And when the king came to see him, he said, Oh, please let Tamar come down and make me a couple of cakes so I can eat them at her hand. So David sent home to Tamar, saying, Go on down to your brother Amnon’s house and fix him something to eat. So she went, and he was laid down, and she took flour and kneaded it and made cakes in his sight, and he baked them, and she took a pan and poured them out before him. And the lout refused to eat. Poor Tamar couldn’t do anything. She was trapped. Her father had sent her down there, and she hadn’t suspected anything.
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Until the last moment. The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. You may call us at 1-888-BIBLE44 and visit us online at borntowin.net.
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