“David sent…”
—2 Samuel 11:1, 3, 4, 6, 27
David sends Joab to besiege Rabbah.
Much is often made of nothing. David does nothing, and much trouble comes from it, so we are often told. It is true, doing something good is the best way to keep from doing something bad. If you don’t want to love an idol with any of your heart, then love God with all your heart. It is said that an idle mind is the devil’s playground. Liberty towards leisure leads to licentiousness. Truly man is incapable of idling. Fallen man has no neutral. An idolatrous heart cannot have an idle mind. Man is either working and resting unto God or he is working and resting unto self.
Are we then making much of nothing? Is this mountain really a molehill? Was David’s staying home in Jerusalem a sin? If mom and dad go into town, it is not, in itself, a bad thing if the kids say they’d like to stay home, though it might prove better for them to have gone along. Staying home can mean playing with matches or washing the dishes. Certainly, we may imagine that it may have been much better if David had gone out to battle. But just because going out may have been better does not mean that staying home was bad.
The real failure isn’t that David didn’t battle with his men; it is that he didn’t battle against his sin. If we are not always about this battle, it does not matter where we are or what other battles we are or are not involved in.
David sends to inquire of Bathsheba. David sends for Bathsheba.
David saw. David does not mortify his lust. He indulges his curiosity and abuses his authority. He saw. He sent. He took.
When the opportunity is fertile for sins’s pleasures, it is also fertile for sin’s consequences. Sin is always pregnant with death.
David sends for Uriah. David sends Uriah to Joab.
David tries to undo his sending with more sending. We try to undo our sin with more sin. We try to wash our sin with sin, but we only smear the mud, rub it in, and add to it. David is not in control and he only creates more problems by continuing to act as though he were. Sin is the problem that the more you try to solve it, the more you complexify it. You can only ask for help.
David tries to hide and cover up his sin. But his fig leaves easily wither. Sin cannot be covered by man. It can only be cleansed. And it can only be cleansed by the nail pierced hands of the Son of God. Trying to hide sin is like hiding fungus; if you put it in the dark, you only get more fungus.
Joab sends a messenger to David.
Joab is concerned David might be upset. Other men have died with Bathsheba. But the king expresses no anger. It maters not to him. Uriah is dead.
David admirably mourned the deaths of Saul and Abner, but sin has so callused, so hardened, so blinded, so deafened, so darkened, so deadened him, that he expresses no grief at the loss of these men and this devoted servant.
David is fearful of the consequences of his sin, but the worst consequences have already taken root in his soul. Left in the dark, sin corrodes. We fear our sin being exposed when we should fear it remaining hidden. We fear sin hurting us without when we should fear hurting us within.
David sends for Bathsheba to take her as his wife.
Notice the strength of Scripture’s written account of David’s sin. There is no detailed drama to draw us in so that we see and take. The account is not romanticized. It is not given any sensual indulgence. The truth is told of it, not the lies.
This will be the last time David sends. God will do the sending in chapter 12, and he will send because “the thing David had done displeased the LORD” (v. 27).
No Other Boast 