Hidden Sin (2 Samuel 11:6-26)
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Today’s reading is 2 Samuel 11:6-26
So David sent word to Joab, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.”
2 Samuel 11:6
Reflect ❤️
David’s sin is so devastating, partly because it stands in such stark contrast with so much of his earlier life.
Before David became King and in the early years of his reign, so much of his life has been marked out by trusting in God. Trusting God’s strength to bring about God’s plans. Rather than forcing his own agenda, time and again he put his trust in the God who rules and reigns and who does justice in the end. And because of that, David truly was a great King, known for “administering justice and equity to all his people” (2 Samuel 8:15).
Which makes chapter 11 so devastating. David brazenly sleeps with a married woman, Bathsheeba the wife of Uriah, one of his own mighty men (2 Samuel 23:39). And the evidence of what he has done is starting to show. Bathsheba is pregnant.
Our hearts sink.
The contrast is clear, while before David trusted in God’s power to achieve God’s purposes, now David uses his power to fulfil his desires. He pursues his own agenda, with no regard to the costs, treating people like they are worth less than him.
His initial act was terrible enough, but now David descends deeper. To cover his tracks, he resorts to deception, attempting to arrange situations that make it look like Uriah is the father of his child after all. Then when that fails, he descends further still, deciding that killing Uriah is the only way to take away the problem.
David uses sin to cover sin, wrongdoing with wrongdoing.
While David seeks to hide his sin from others, the disfiguring effects of sin become clear to us, the reader. Sin distorts our perspective, makes it harder to see things objectively. Sin tells us we are acting in self-preservation, but ultimately each descent into evil is truly self-destruction.
As followers of Jesus, what are we to learn from David? Firstly, we are to take warning. Jesus encouraged us to be ruthless with sin in our lives, with imagery all can understand, “if your hand or foot causes you to sin - cut it off and throw it away!” It is better to feel short term pain and loss, than to deal with its ultimate consequences. We are fooling ourselves if we, like David, imagine we can leave hidden sin to fester without it destroying us from the inside out.
But there is more too. David sought to rid himself of the problem of sin by putting an innocent man to death. It covered it up, but didn’t take it away. Jesus calls us to bring our sin into the light that we might be made clean.
This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.
John 3:19-21
Pray 🙏
Praise God we live in the light of Jesus, who deals with our sin in the light of his grace. Below is a prayer of repentance if we know we have been concealing sin, hoping it would go away by itself.
Lord Jesus, I confess I have sinned against you. I confess that I have tried to deal with my sin myself. I confess that I have tried to preserve my reputation and fix the problems my sin created, only to make everything worse.
Thank you Jesus for your grace, that you died that I might live. Lord Jesus I turn to you again, trusting that you and you alone can forgive me and restore what I have damaged by my sin. Thank you Lord Jesus.
Amen