”Then David sent to Joab, saying, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent Uriah to David. When Uriah had come to him, David asked how Joab was doing, and how the people were doing, and how the war prospered. And David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet.” So Uriah departed from the king’s house, and a gift of food from the king followed him. But Uriah slept at the door of the king’s house with all the servants of his Lord, and did not go down to his house. So when they told David, saying, “Uriah did not go down to his house,” David said to Uriah, “Did you not come from a journey? Why did you not go down to your house?” And Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah are dwelling in tents, and my Lord Joab and the servants of my Lord are encamped in the open fields. Shall I then go to my house to eat and drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing.”“
II Samuel 11:6-11 NKJV
a. Send me Uriah the Hittite: When David heard the disastrous news of Bathsheba’s pregnancy, he should have used it as a prompting to repent. Instead, David did what most unrepentant sinners do: he tried to hide his sin. He wanted to draw Uriah back home to have relations with Bathsheba to give a reason for her pregnancy.
i. The whole concept of hiding our sin is deceptive. Our sin is never hidden before God and only hidden with difficulty from our conscience. Our hidden sin hinders our fellowship with God and others and is a barrier to spiritual life and power.
ii. “The real question for us all is: Are we prepared to face sin? Not to discuss someone else’s sin, but to face our own.” (Redpath)
iii. The answer to hidden sin is confession and repentance. To whom should we confess? The answer is in the question, “Whom have we sinned against?” “If you sin secretly, confess secretly, admitting publicly that you need the victory but keeping details to yourself. If you sin openly confess openly to remove stumbling blocks from those whom you have hindered. If you have sinned spiritually (prayerlessness, lovelessness, and unbelief as well as their offspring, criticism, etc.) then confess to the church that you have been a hindrance.” (J. Edwin Orr)
iv. “As soon as ever we are conscious of sin, the right thing is not to begin to reason with the sin, or to wait until we have brought ourselves into a proper state of heart about it, but to go at once and confess the transgression unto the Lord, there and then.” (Spurgeon)
b. David asked how Joab was doing, and how the people were doing, and how the war prospered: This was David’s awkward attempt to pretend that nothing happened. David gave every appearance that things were normal when before God nothing was normal or right.
i. Go down to your house: “David’s design was that he should go and lie with his wife, that the child now conceived should pass for his, the honour of Bath-sheba be screened, and his own crime concealed. At this time he had no design of the murder of Uriah, nor of taking Bath-sheba to wife.” (Clarke)
c. The ark and Israel and Judah are dwelling in tents: This shows that Uriah had a passion for the glory of God, even though he was a Hittite and not a native Jew.
d. Shall I then go to my house to eat and drink, and to lie with my wife? This shows Uriah as a man of great integrity. He was a willing to sacrifice his own desires and ease, and he did not want to enjoy the comforts of home while his fellow soldiers endured hardship on the field of battle.
i. “David had expected and hoped that Uriah would prove to be like himself; instead he proved to be a man of integrity, whose first loyalty was to the king’s interests rather than to his own pleasure.” (Baldwin)
(Guzik)
Hiding Our Sin!
“Our sin is never hidden before God” (Guzik)
Oh What a web we weave to hid our sin we create more sin to cover the first sin. Let David be a lesson for us!
“Alas, how one sin leads to another, and like flames of fire, spreads desolation in every direction! Dissipation leads to seduction; seduction produces wrath; wrath thirsts for revenge; the thirst of revenge has recourse to treachery; treachery issues in murder; and murder is followed by lawless depredation! Were we to trace the history of illicit commerce between the sexes, we should find it, more perhaps than any other sin, terminating in blood. We may read this warning truth not only in the life of David and his family, but in what is constantly occurring in our own times. The murder of the innocent offspring by the hand of the mother, or of the mother by the hand of the seducer; or of the seducer by the hand of a brother, or a supplanted rival — are events which too frequently fail under our notice. Nor is this all, even in the present world. Murder seldom escapes detection: a public execution therefore may be expected to close the tragical process!” (A. Fuller.)
Blessings
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