Giving Up Control
2 Samuel 11.1-15
Dr. D. William McIvor
July 27, 2003
Presbyterian Church in Sudbury

Introduction to the Morning Lesson

This is the second of three sermons about Israel’s great King David. The text shows a sordid side of David that can still shock even modern sensibilities. In this one text, David covets his neighbor’s wife (prohibited by the Tenth Commandment), commits adultery (against the Seventh Commandment), in essence steals from his neighbor and bears false witness about him (contra the Eighth and Ninth), and commits murder (breaking the Sixth Commandment). In doing all of that he certainly disobeys the First Commandment — to have no other gods, which means being devoted solely to God. And if we’re going to be stringent, his evil behavior certainly dishonors what his parents had taught him. So he breaks the Fifth Commandment too.

That’s seven broken commandments out of ten. There was no reason for God to love David. But God did. That is the nature of God. And today’s text will help us better understand why a loving God takes sin seriously. Let’s read it in 2 Samuel 11.

2 Samuel 11.1-15 (NRSV)

In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.

It happened, late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful. David sent someone to inquire about the woman. It was reported, “This is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” So David sent messengers to get her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she was purifying herself after her period.) Then she returned to her house. The woman conceived; and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”

So David sent word to Joab, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent Uriah to David. When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab and the people fared, and how the war was going. Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house, and wash your feet.” Uriah went out of the king’s house, and there followed him a present from the king. But Uriah slept at the entrance of the king’s house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house. When they told David, “Uriah did not go down to his house,” David said to Uriah, “You have just come from a journey. Why did you not go down to your house?” Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah remain in booths; and my lord Joab 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 such a thing.”

Obviously David was hoping that Uriah would have intercourse with his wife. Then Bathsheba’s pregnancy would not be suspicious. But Uriah was honorable and David was not.

Then David said to Uriah, “Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back.” So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day. On the next day, David invited him to eat and drink in his presence and made him drunk; and in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house.

In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. In the letter he wrote, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die.”

I want to add to the lesson three verses from the end of chapter 11. Joab was a loyal commander and unquestioningly did what he was asked. Uriah was put in the worst part of the battle and was killed. When David heard this news, he sent a messenger back to Joab. Picking up now in verse 25:

David said to the messenger, “Thus you shall say to Joab, ‘Do not let this matter trouble you, for the sword devours now one and now another; press your attack on the city, and overthrow it.’ And encourage him.”

When the wife of Uriah heard that her husband was dead, she made lamentation for him. When the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife, and bore him a son.

But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.

Introduction

One of the most important principles for interpreting the Bible correctly is that we should read it theologically and not moralistically. In other words, we read it for its theo + logos — its word about God. Unfortunately, a lot of sermons and Bible teaching do just the opposite, ignoring the theological and substituting the moralistic.[1]

A moralistic reading of today’s text would go something like this: David was sure an awful guy; you better not be so awful or God will get you. Or: David sure did some bad things but good Christians like us are better than that. Besides, David loved God and that’s why God forgave him. Or: David behaved immorally just like a lot of our own politicians and that’s what’s wrong with America today.

Any such readings of this text badly miss the mark. Moralistic readings miss the mark because they end up saying, in effect, “Tsk, tsk. Ain’t it a shame! Other people are sure bad. I’m glad I’m not like that.” In other words, moralizing a text doesn’t take it seriously. Moralizing keeps a text at arm’s length so it won’t apply to our own lives. But keeping the Bible at arm’s length is always a mistake.

Now the end of this story doesn’t really come until next week’s sermon. Next week’s text, Psalm 51, is David’s poetic and penitential response to his sinfulness. But the key today is for us to come face to face with what David did and see ourselves in what he did. Maybe we don’t murder. Maybe we don’t steal. Maybe we don’t lie very much. When adultery has happened, I suspect it was regretted quickly. But the point is not the specifics of our sin but the condition of our sinfulness. David’s was an impeachable offense, to use our constitutional word. He betrayed his office as king of Israel. But our sins are impeachable offenses too. They betray our office as children of God, as creatures of the one Creator. So let’s try to get on the inside of this text for a few minutes this morning.

THEME: We’re not in control

My message has just one point today and that is that we’re not in control. Controlling our own lives is an illusion that gets us in trouble.

My father died when I was in my early twenties and my mother died when I was in my early forties. Watching them age, grow frail, become ill, and eventually die was obviously difficult. But for them the most difficult thing was the gradual loss of control. The ability to drive, to cook, to dress and bathe oneself, to live on one’s own: as these abilities decreased, my mother and father lost control of their lives. I know that many of you have seen this in your loved ones and perhaps, to some degree, in yourselves. It will happen to all of us and it’s a painful reality.

In actuality, however, control of our own lives is an illusion and we get in trouble, especially in trouble with God, when we do not acknowledge its illusory character. It doesn’t take much to show us how little control we really have. In June 1996, I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico for our denomination’s General Assembly. I was completing my term as Chair of the General Assembly Council. I was in charge of things, one of the highest leaders in our church — a denominational big-wig, if you will. But within a few hours, what turned out to be a kidney stone waylaid me, caused such pain that I thought I was going to die, and landed me in the hospital, where even the emergency room doctor was worried about me for awhile. So I know from painful personal experience that within minutes illness or accidents or all kinds of other troubles can take away our apparent control. And the real problem in all this is that when we think we’re in control we do not acknowledge our utter dependence on God. So it was with David.

David was at mid-life, apparently at the height of his powers. Once, he had led Israel’s armies in battle; now, David was too much in control to be heroic. He was forty-eight. Now he could leave the spring campaign to his younger generals and spend long afternoons napping on his couch after too much wine at lunch.

Some of David’s old decisiveness could still be mustered, of course. Looking out his window he saw the lovely body of Bathsheba. He saw. He sent. He took. He lay. There was no long, tortured wrestling with conscience. King David was at the height of his autonomy and royal power. No brooding or caution for him. There was only action. Being king, he could do as he pleased. He was in control, after all.

But in the text, the woman finally spoke and her simple words, “I am pregnant,” shattered the king’s world. Royal strategies attempted to salvage the situation, but already control was slipping through David’s fingers. He went from sin to increased sin to worse sin in a sordid, downward spiral of trying to regain lost control and it ended in death, not David’s but Uriah’s, and eventually the death of the child born to David and Bathsheba.

That is the essence sinfulness: trying to run our own lives, confident that our decisions are always right, with no concern for the consequences. When we cling to control, we are behaving like David. It may not lead us to the evil to which it led him but it will not lead us to God.[2]

That’s the point made by the writer of the text in those additional verses I read earlier from the end of chapter 11. David sent a message to General Joab saying, “Do not let this matter [about Uriah] trouble you” (11.25a) Unfortunately, the New Revised Standard Version, along with most modern translations, obscures what the original Hebrew text said: David’s message was literally “do not let this matter be evil in your eyes.” Then, two verses later, the writer concludes this episode by saying, “the thing that David had done displeased the Lord” (11.27b). Again, our Bibles have a paraphrased translation. Literally the text says that David’s behavior “was evil in the eyes of the Lord.”

By juxtaposing verses 25 and 27, the writer skillfully shows that royal perceptions of reality are not congruent with God’s perception. The royal seductions of power and security have skewed David’s moral vision. The king may act. The king may kill. The king may be self-satisfied. The king, however, is not capable of revising moral reality. The king may imagine he has escaped the hard, non-negotiable reality of God’s law. The king may imagine he is morally autonomous and subject to no one. At the end of the story, however, there is God, with another moral vision and God’s eyes see better than David’s eyes or, for that matter, our eyes. David may not see clearly, blinded as he was by fear, lust, and power, but that does not change the moral reality to which David had to answer.[3] We must answer to the same moral reality. We must answer to God.

Conclusion

When we understand that sin — David’s sin and ours — is trying to be in control instead of letting God be in control of our lives, then we can understand why God takes sin seriously. Sin is serious not because God is a censorious nag out to get us but because it breaks the right relationship between the creature and the Creator. Sin is wrong because it insults God by denying God rightful control of that which God made.

In his book, Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society, Ted Peters describes what it’s like to insult God. He writes: “When I think of the insult to God, I think in terms of an analogy drawn from my own professional experience. I worked for a few years as a reference librarian at the Columbus (Ohio) Public Library. The librarian in charge of the reference section and my immediate supervisor was Gretchen DeWitt. I admired and liked her, and she liked me in return. We enjoyed a fine working relationship.

“One Friday afternoon, I was working on a particularly complicated reference problem. Knowing that the library would be closing in an hour or so, I was concentrating diligently to finish up. Miss DeWitt came to my desk and asked me to come with her to the workroom for a conference. I told her I was busy and asked if it could wait. No, it couldn’t wait. I began to feel anxiety over time. I was frustrated at being interrupted. I began to remember previous occasions on which Miss DeWitt had interrupted me. Rage arose within me. Taking liberties that might strain our otherwise healthy, working relationship I insisted that I keep to my project. She insisted with equal vehemence that I drop the work and go to the workroom. Then she turned and walked, expecting me to follow. I did.

“All the way I nagged her by complaining. She said nothing and walked on. Seeing that my complaining was ineffective, I scolded her. Then I raised the pitch of my scolding. Soon we arrived at the workroom door. We entered and found the entire library staff standing around a table holding a cake and lit candles and singing ‘Happy Birthday’ — to me. Miss DeWitt had planned the party in my honor. How humiliated I felt. Once the truth of Miss DeWitt’s graciousness became clear to me, I became aware of how I had insulted her. However, Miss DeWitt showed not even the slightest sign of retaliation for my rudeness. She was elegantly gracious. Because of her grace, my insult didn’t harm our relationship.”[4]

Friends, so it is with God. d seeks our blessing, our happiness. But we’ll never know it if we insist on controlling our own lives. Presuming ourselves in control is a great insult to God. It leads us down David’s path. How much better the path of Jesus who said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit [we might say “those who lack control”], for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5.3).

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