The Downfall of Kings – Passion
Sycamore Creek Church
January 15, 2012
Tom Arthur
2 Samuel 11 & 12 (Selections)

I have a covenant with my pants. I will never leave them nor forsake them. So when they get too tight, it’s time to lose weight. I’m currently trying to lose about twelve pounds. I’m not overweight; I was just getting to the top of my healthy weight range. And because most of the men in my family are overweight and struggling with various forms of diabetes, I pay a lot of attention to my own weight. My body often wants to eat all kinds of junk food, but I don’t always give my body what it wants. The body’s senses are a beautiful gift, but if continually fed, they will also undo us.

Today we continue in a series called The Downfall of Kings. We’re looking at the ancient kings of Israel and moments when they fell. It’s my hope that we can learn something from these kings so that we won’t repeat their mistakes. Last week we looked at Israel’s first king, King Saul, and his struggle with power. Today we look at Saul’s successor, King David, and his struggle with passion. Let’s dive right into the story.

2 Samuel 11:1-2 NLT
The following spring, the time of year when kings go to war, David sent Joab and the Israelite army to destroy the Ammonites. In the process they laid siege to the city of Rabbah. But David stayed behind in Jerusalem. Late one afternoon David got out of bed after taking a nap and went for a stroll on the roof of the palace. As he looked out over the city, he noticed a woman of unusual beauty taking a bath.

How We Spend Our Time
Here we see that David wasn’t doing what he probably should have been doing, leading his army. Rather, he was lounging on his couch. It is not clear whether his seeing Bathsheba was intentional or unintentional, but it doesn’t matter. If he had been doing something besides lounging around, his mind might have been preoccupied with worthwhile action, thoughts, and ideas and might have been able to resist an unintentional and unexpected temptation.

When do we do the same thing today? When are we lounging on our couches when we should be out joining the mission of our community? Do you realize that today most of us live at a standard of living way beyond what any king of old ever lived. Air conditioning alone is a luxury beyond comparison. And what do we do with that luxury? We watch TV and we surf the internet. How much time do you spend lounging on your couch or in your LazyBoy watching TV or surfing the internet at your desk? I’m not suggesting that TV or the internet are all bad. But most of us probably could do with a little less of each. What we feed our minds by what we choose to watch sets us up either to live for God or to fall like David.

What about your reading habits? When was the last time you read a book? I suspect that most of us when we do read, read magazines. And what kind of magazines are we reading? I admit, that I am tempted to read pretty low-grade magazines, or at least focus on the more banal stuff in the good magazines that I do read. A year ago I tried a subscription to Entertainment Weekly. I thought it might be a good way for me to stay on top of current pop culture. The only problem was that I regularly found myself turning first to the section of the magazine where they grade the fashion choices of various celebrities. Reese Witherspoon – A. Melissa Joan Hart – D+. I don’t even know who Melissa Joan Hart is, but know that she can’t choose a fashionable dress to wear. Is this really what I want to be spending my time doing? Or is this setting me up in some way to have my own personal downfall with passion?

2 Samuel 11:2-4 NLT
He sent someone to find out who she was, and he was told, “She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” Then David [took] sent for her; and when she came to the palace, he slept with her. (She had just completed the purification rites after having her menstrual period.) Then she returned home.

Giving in to Your Passions
David sees Bathsheba and wants her. So far there isn’t much he’s done wrong. What happens next is where it spirals downward. His body wants what he isn’t supposed to have, and he gives it to his body anyway. Here we see the anatomy of an affair (no pun intended).

Sometimes I tend to think that affairs happen in an instant. But they don’t. Affairs are built upon subtle but cumulative actions. Here’s what David did to build his affair:

He looked Bathsheba up on Facebook.
He was told her relationship status was “married” to one of his “close friends.”
He “messaged” her and used his power and privilege to bring her to his palace.
He waited while she came to the palace.
He “slept” with her.
She went home.

This is all David’s work. It is slow and deliberate. There is plenty of time throughout the whole thing for David to change his mind, to decide not to give his body what it wants. We’re going to come back to the steps of this affair more at the end of the message, but for now let’s notice that Bathsheba is the victim here. Many commentators in the past have accused Bathsheba of some plot to tempt David. I’m not buying it. She is trapped by the power of the king. The only time she is the subject of the sentence is the last one: she went home. Otherwise David is the one acting throughout the entire passage.

Restraining the Passions
While David attempts to take from Bathsheba’s body to fulfill his passions, her body cannot be fully controlled, and bites back. She conceives. She sends word to David. David figures that there is a simple solution to his problem. Bring home her husband, Uriah. Surely a sex-starved warrior from the battlefield will sleep with his “hot” wife when give the opportunity. But things don’t go as David expects. Uriah sleeps outside and does not sleep with his wife. David calls him and asks why.

2 Samuel 11:11 NLT
Uriah replied, “The Ark and the armies of Israel and Judah are living in tents, and Joab and his officers are camping in the open fields. How could I go home to wine and dine and sleep with my wife? I swear that I will never be guilty of acting like that.”

In contrast to David, Uriah is principled and restrains his own passions for higher ideals. Uriah fasts from giving his body what he wants. He recognizes that sometimes you must give up something good (there is nothing wrong with sex in marriage) for something better (focus and community commitment to a mission).

What a contrast Uriah is with our behavior today! We eat whatever we want when we want it. We consume entertainment without considering its effect on us. We indulge our sexual appetites as much as possible.

Jesus’ Passion
Uriah is a kind of Christ-figure. In this moment, he is like Jesus in many ways. When Jesus was tempted by Satan to indulge his own bodily appetites, he resisted.

Luke 4:1-4 NLT
Then Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan River. He was led by the Spirit to go out into the wilderness, where the Devil tempted him for forty days. He ate nothing all that time and was very hungry. Then the Devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, change this stone into a loaf of bread.” But Jesus told him, “No! The Scriptures say, ‘People need more than bread for their life.’”

Jesus is on a spiritual retreat rather than lounging around. Because of this spiritual retreat, he is “full of the Holy Spirit.” In some ways a spiritual retreat in the wilderness is a kind of lounging, but it is a different kind of lounging. It is a purposeful resting, Sabbath keeping. When was the last time you took a spiritual retreat?

Not only was Jesus on a spiritual retreat in the wilderness, but he was also fasting. He was giving up something good (food) for something better (spiritual strength). When was the last time you fasted intentionally for spiritual reasons. I’m not talking about fasting to make weight for your wrestling tournament or fasting in the morning before having a procedure done at the hospital. I’m talking about giving up food or some luxury for a set period of time so that you could focus more fully on communion with God.

Jesus also is focused on the well being of others rather than just his own well being. While Satan thinks he can tempt Jesus with the passion of his stomach, Jesus has his own end in mind, the salvation of the world.

Let’s get back to David…

2 Samuel 11:14-17 NLT
So the next morning David wrote a letter to Joab and gave it to Uriah to deliver. The letter instructed Joab, “Station Uriah on the front lines where the battle is fiercest. Then pull back so that he will be killed.” So Joab assigned Uriah to a spot close to the city wall where he knew the enemy’s strongest men were fighting. And Uriah was killed along with several other Israelite soldiers.

When David realizes that his plan to pass his own child off as the child of Uriah won’t work, he makes another plan – kill Uriah. David is in deep here. I know that all sin is simply sin in God’s eyes, but there is something quantitatively different about murder as compared to adultery: someone dies. David tramples others to “feed” his body’s passions.

I think it is very tempting at this point to excuse yourself from the story. Most of us have never killed anyone or even come close. But let’s not neglect the times when our actions trample on the well being of others. We ignore the people who serve us at the grocery store, gas station, coffee house, restaurant, drive through and the like. We eat food without paying attention to way it was grown/raised and the impact that has had on others, especially low-wage immigrants and migrant workers.

This past week I was talking to Jeremy about this point in the sermon. He told me a story about his Freshman year at MSU. He was not yet fully sold out to following Jesus, but he had never been to a strip joint. His friends decided that he needed to go, so they took him to Omars. When he walked in, he immediately recognized one of the strippers as a “friend” of his from high school in Traverse City. He went up to her and called her by her first name. She immediately told him not to do that. She didn’t want people to know her first name, and the culture of strip joint is that you don’t go by your real name. The stripper has a stage name that helps keep the fantasy going. What it does is depersonalize the whole experience and objectify the women who are paid to fulfill the passions of the men in the room. But Jeremy wasn’t able to make that leap. Once he realized that it was a friend of his who was the stripper, he could no longer enjoy it. He couldn’t depersonalize and objectify her to feed his body’s passion for lust. His “friend” ruined the whole night for him. This is what theologians call “prevenient grace.” It’s God’s grace at work in Jeremy before he even recognizes that it is God at work. Thank you, God!

The Anatomy of an Affair
David gave his body what it wanted, an adulterous tryst with Bathsheba. I mentioned earlier that there were several progressive and slow steps into this affair. I’d like to look at a modern day example of this kind of slow progression.

In the movie, He’s Just Not That Into You, we see the slow progression of an affair unfold between two people, Ben (played by Bradley Cooper), a married man, and Anna (played by Scarlett Johansson), a single woman. They bump into each other at the grocery store and begin flirting, but as she’s getting ready to give him her number, Ben confesses that he’s married. She is an aspiring singer and he works in an office that can help her, so he decides that it’s OK to exchange cards so that he can offer her advice on her singing career. Eventually he calls her to offer advice on her career, and when she comes to his office, he can’t find the “advice” he wanted to give her. He goes to a yoga class that she’s leading, and they go swimming afterward. She says she just wants to be friends but then jumps in naked. It’s all downhill from there…

Throughout this movie, Ben as a married man crosses a lot of boundaries. I asked on Facebook what people thought were appropriate boundaries for married people with friends of the opposite sex. I’ve never had so many comments on a sermon question on Facebook before! And what you all didn’t get to see if you were following the conversation was how many private messages I got from people who have been burned in the past by spouses or boy/girlfriends who walked all over boundaries. Here are some of the boundaries that people suggested:

• Always behave with them as if their spouse was sitting next to them.
• If you wouldn’t feel comfortable telling your partner about it, then it is probably a bad idea.
• Anything my grandmother would raise an eyebrow at is probably not OK.
• If you are married and on Facebook, have more friends of the same sex than the opposite sex.
• If you are being nicer than you need to be, you are flirting.
• Keep no private email addresses or Facebook accounts.
• No opposite sex friends that your spouse does not know about.
• We agree to have full access to each others Facebook accounts and cell phones.
• Talking negatively about your spouse to the other person or problems you may be having in your marriage.
• If we want to hang out with a good friend of the opposite sex, we invite each other and the friend’s spouse/significant other.

Modern life has made this more complicated, hasn’t it? Did you hear how many times Facebook was mentioned in this list? And these are only a selection of the comments left to my question.

I originally asked this question on Facebook because I was intending to write a set of guidelines for this message, but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make a list that I thought was appropriate for everyone. So what I’ve decided to do is make a list of what my boundaries are. As a pastor, I have to pay extra special attention to this issue because the appearance of an affair can be just as damaging to our community as an actual affair. And yet, as I wrote this list, I also realized that these are all things I would do whether I was a pastor or not. They are also boundaries that for the most part, I expect the leaders of our church to be living into as well. So if you are a leader, pay close attention! But if you are not a leader, then I offer these to you for your own consideration.

First, a couple of preliminary thoughts. These boundaries are not always completely solid. They are tendencies. They are things I do most of the time. There are exceptions to all of them, but it would take too long and be too cumbersome to write out all the exceptions. And yet, they are very firm boundaries. I pay special attention to these boundaries when Sarah is out of town and/or when I am with someone close to my age or younger. I also pay close attention when I begin to notice patterns rather than exceptions. Am I spending a lot of time with one person over and over again? I also follow these boundaries when Sarah and I offer hospitality in our home by inviting someone to live with us. Enough with preliminaries. Here’s the boundaries:

• I don’t meet one-on-one in private spaces (I always meet in public spaces), and I try not to ride one-on-one in a car with someone of the opposite sex (but this is not always possible).
• When I have met one-on-one with someone of the opposite sex even in a public space, I tell Sarah about it (so she’s not surprised should someone mention to her that they saw me and so-and-so at such-and-such), and if she isn’t happy about it, I DON’T DO IT AGAIN!
• I tend not to do dinner or after-dinner events (even in public places) one-on-one with someone of the opposite sex.
• I don’t drink alcohol one-on-one with someone of the opposite sex.
• I do have male accountability partners that I share openly (give a true account of myself) about crushes I might be experiencing (those didn’t go away when I got married), and I seek their wisdom about appropriate boundaries with this person.
• I don’t share sides of myself or emotions that I’m not sharing with Sarah.
• I don’t discuss my sex life one-on-one with someone of the opposite sex.
• I do have open conversations with others about these boundaries.

Now that’s a lot of “don’ts” but all those don’ts are really built around the “I do” that I said at my wedding. I don’t do some things so that I do do other things. Saying “no” to some things is all about saying “yes” to other things.

Repentance
David’s downfall isn’t the end of the story. In fact, it’s what happens next that makes him such an amazing king. He has an issue with the passions of his body, but he also is passionate for the LORD. God sends a prophet, Nathan, to confront David about his affair and murder. David has the power to execute Nathan, but he doesn’t. Here’s what he does do:

2 Samuel 12:13-17 NLT
Then David confessed to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD.” Nathan replied, “Yes, but the LORD has forgiven you, and you won’t die for this sin. But you have given the enemies of the LORD great opportunity to despise and blaspheme him, so your child will die.” After Nathan returned to his home, the LORD made Bathsheba’s baby deathly ill. David begged God to spare the child. He went without food and lay all night on the bare ground.

Notice how David is no longer lounging on his “bed/couch” – he’s laying on the ground. He is no longer giving his body what it wants – he’s fasting. He is no longer trampling other people – he’s focused on the well being of others rather than his own body’s desires.

David has turned his life around, repented, and is now following in the ways of the LORD, the same ways that Jesus was following in when he was tempted in the dessert. And God forgave him. There were still consequences. Bathsheba’s baby still died. God rarely takes away the consequences of our sin, but God is in the business of reconciling with us and reconciling us with others.

Maybe you’ve had an affair in the past. Maybe right now you’re on the slow path to an affair. Maybe you’re in the middle of one. Confess it and repent. Stop giving in to your body’s passions. Join the mission of God in the community of this church. There is forgiveness. There is new life. Thank you, God!

Next Steps Discussion
1. When do you not give your body what it wants?
2. What do you think are good boundaries in marriage for opposite-sex friends?