Duty & Faithfulness
| Record Number: | 1 |
| Date: | Sunday, July 26, 2009 |
| Title: | Duty & Faithfulness |
| Author: | Pastor Ken Hilston |
There are times the Bible softens things up and makes them look rosier than they are. Some battle scenes show complete, total 100% victory, and the walls come tumbling down, just at the right time, and just a little too conveniently. It is just too neat. Nothing in life is all that total! Really: not all the Egyptians took an unscheduled bath!!
However, today is not the case. We have the story of David's infidelity, Israel's king, God's servant, and later our Lord would be called, Son of David. The shadow of the cross is foretold in the lives of many people. Maybe the Bible in telling the unvarnished truth, lets us know, life is muddy, and cluttered with all kinds of things, even from the best of people, and even the most important. However, even the Bible backs off at times. The books of the Chronicles of the Kings, that also describes this time in Israel's history, neglects to mention this unseemly episode in David's reign: David received quite a white washing.
However, as we will see, no one is incapable of ugly things. Just maybe, the strongest and most powerful are the most vulnerable to slip deepest far from the expected norms As Genesis tells us poignantly, sin is couching at the doors of all of our lives, just getting to pounce when we least expect it, or when we are weakest, yet don't realize it. Yet for the surprise, those we think least capable of greatness, show a faithfulness that humbles us all.
I want you to take the test I periodically give as a final exam question in confirmation class, a take home exam. Listen carefully as I discuss this 11th chapter of 2 Samuel in the sermon, and see how many commandments David broke, and describe why you considered them violated. But don't shout "bingo" if you think you are the first one to check off all the correct boxes. Please also remember from last Sunday's sermon, God's expectations of His shepherding kings.
You just know something is not right from the get go. We are told in chapter 11, it is the spring of the year, the time when soldiers go off to battle, so David sent Joab and his servants with him, and all Israel to ravage the Ammonites and besiege Rabbah. BUT, David remained in Jerusalem. David sent them off to do his dirty work, while he stayed behind, as the fox in the hen house. They went off to do battle, David's battle, while David remained in luxury, far from the battlelines. Just that is enough to know about David to tell us something dreadfully is wrong. If it is important enough for the others to go, should not David do the same? Double standards are never pretty, no matter how much you polish it up. "Do as I say, not as I do." The nation is at war, Uriah is fighting the battle for Israel, and David is at war with Uriah's household, while Uriah is set to battle where he cannot protect his household.
The passage continues in what seems a nonchalant way. Oh, by the way, one late afternoon, David rose from his couch to take a stroll on the roof of his penthouse. I wonder how many of his soliders in the field got an afternoon nap, on a couch? With nothing else to do, he just happens to look upon one of his neighbors, taking a bath. I could just hear him telling his wife, "it was an accident, she just caught my eye."
Curiosity got the best of him, and David just had to wonder who she was. I guess there was nothing about the war that satisfied his curiosity about life. He must have had a lot of free time on his hands. After finding out she was married to Uriah the Hittite, he invites her over to complete his afternoon nap. She grabbed his attention, and he grabbed her. Or as the Bible said, he sent servants to retrieve her, and he took her. It was an offer she couldn't refuse. Later she sent word back to the King, "in case you are wondering, I am with child, and my husband is still at the battlefront fighting your war."
What we see unraveling in front of us is how creative we can be in simply taking care of one's self, first and foremost. There is but one thing on David's mind, himself! He cares only about his needs, or at least perceived needs. "How do I get what I want?"
Being a king, it is much easier to make everyone around you pawns in your game of life. "Do what you can to make life easier for me!" It is always that sad dream in life, that pitiful dream to be precise, "all life revolves around me!" Today it began with the army being sent by him to do battle, for him, and the servants to fetch Bathsheba to bring her to his bed. He sits back, and barks out the orders, like a ringmaster in the circus, with a bit of a smile, and an invisible, yet potent whip in his hand. "I can orchestrate life, my way."
Now begins the cover up of the deed to insure that David still "looks" like a proper King to at least some of the people. Obviously there is the problem. Maybe, but probably not, he can pull the wool over the eyes of the people, but the Lord God will never be blind to someone's such outrageous behavior. Part of sin is we think we can kid ourselves into pretending, that black is white, and no one notices my idiocy.
David barks out the order to Joab the obedient general. "Send me Uriah." Joab dutifully sends Uriah home to help the king use Uriah to cover up what he has done to Uriah's household. *But here is one person David cannot intimidate or control. Somehow his puppet strings do not reach deep enough into to Uriah, as they did to everyone else. Joab does what the king wants, but Uriah, the lowly grunt soldier, holds firm to his soldier's ethics. He has a code of service, even as a simple soldier, and will not violate it, even for a king.
First, David sweet talks Uriah. He tries to make it look like he just wants simple information about how the battle is going, troop morale, all kinds of nice things. Then like a reward, really a bribe, he sends Uriah home to enjoy his wife. This way, David hopes that Uriah just might think the child is his, just a little premature in arrival. But David has to pretend that all this is just an innocent suggestion on David's part. He will find it most difficult to get Uriah to do as he wants. Uriah does not take hints, even from a king.
There is as David had to know, a strong military code involved here, maybe even one he set up himself. The code states simply, if a soldier is fortunate enough to get home during a war, and the rest of his comrades are still in the trenches, he cannot enjoy the benefits of home. After all, if your friends are still putting their lives on the line in battle, it wouldn't be right to enjoy the comforts of home: that tight soldier solidarity!
That soldier needs to think about what his friends back in battle are going through, not just myself. It's never just what you can get for yourself. What I'm trying to delicately say is, that soldier is to sleep on the porch, not in the house! Uriah even went so far that he slept in front of the king's door, with the king's servants, not even his own.
Those servants, of the king, dutifully go and report to the king, "Uriah will not abide by your generous tempting suggestion." Sounds like everyone, except Uriah, is in on the cover up. David tries to up the ante and complains to Uriah that he did not pick up on his "charitable" royal suggestion, and war time pardon from the rules.
From Uriah we get his naïve, yet faithful answer to the king. Uriah reminds the king about how a good soldier should act. He in fact, lectures the king about faithfulness to duty, country and rules, something that a king should be doing himself. How often though in scripture isn't it the little person, the person least expected, who shows to the mighty and powerful, how to example a life of faithfulness.
In what appears to be a simplemindedness, he follows the simple dictates of decency. (2 Sam 11:10-12) When they told David, "Uri'ah did not go down to his house," David said to Uri'ah, "Have you not come from a journey? Why did you not go down to your house?" 11 Uri'ah said to David, "The ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths; and my lord Jo'ab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field; shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing." RSV
Again, David needs to up the ante. Bribes and kindness do not get Uriah to violate his military code, so David got him drunk, hoping that would get him to forget about what is the right thing to do. Being drunk seems a good excuse to relax the code of any decent behavior. Yet again this simple soldier holds his ground, with his duty ingrained strongly in his life, and goes again to sleep with the king's servants outside the palace, away from his own home. Nothing could get him to forget or ignore his duty, not even a crafty king and his bighearted alcoholic excuse for bad behavior.
Forced to take the kid gloves off, David resorts to order the cover up to be handled by those who obey him. He asks Uriah to take a message to Joab when he returns to battle. Uriah will carry, what he thinks is an innocent message, really which is his death warrant. The message and command to Joab was, "place Uriah in the battle where surely he will be killed by the enemy." Here the king is judge, jury and executioner!
Somehow I get the picture David never had to get off his comfortable couch just barking out orders. Somehow he must have thought, his hands were clean, because everyone else did the dirty work. Uriah dutifully and unwittingly takes good care of the message, that eventually insures his death.
What stands out here is the faithfulness of Uriah, despite all the temptations to stray from his duty. He disobeyed the king in order to obey God. And as scripture notices often, those that are faithful pay too heavy a price. David too will pay a heavy price in his family, but he was asking for it. But he had to take Uriah down with him.
Both paid the price, but at least Uriah went down with integrity, and maybe sometimes that is the best that life offers us.
AMEN
