2 Samuel 11:1-17

When you see one of your heroes fall from grace, it can be really difficult to process.  I remember when O.J. Simpson was arrested for murder.  I couldn’t believe it!  This man had been a football star, winning the Heisman trophy in 1968, playing in the NFL for 11 seasons.  He had been inducted into both the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame.  He had been successful as an NFL broadcaster and an actor.  How could this have happened?  And what about Tiger Woods?  He is perhaps the greatest golfer ever to play the game.  I have watched him since he first appeared on the scene.  He has done amazing things on the course.  But in 2009 he was exposed as a cheater, when it came out that he had had numerous affairs with women.  He ended up divorced from his wife and lost many endorsements.  Some people followed the career of Lance Armstrong with great interest.  He won the Tour de France seven years in a row, from 1999 to 2005, an incredible feat.  But in 2012 all of his victories were voided when it was proven that he had used performance-enhancing drugs.  He was banned from the sport of bicycle racing for life.

And it is not just our sports heroes who let us down.  I was so disappointed when I learned about the real character of Bill Cosby.  He had been known as “America’s Dad,” famous for the sweaters he wore on “The Cosby Show.”  But in 2014 more than 60 women accused him of rape, drugging them, and sexual misconduct, going back to the 1960s.  He served time in prison after being convicted on charges, but was recently released due to a technicality.  And I was also upset over the case of Matt Lauer, the former host of the “Today” show.  He was accused in November 2017 of assaulting a female staffer during the 2014 Olympics.  He was fired after other women came forward accusing him of predatory actions, including inappropriate texts and gifts.

But I was most hurt when someone I knew and looked up to really let me down and disappointed me.  His name was Dick Nelson and he was the youth minister of the First Baptist Church in Manassas, Virginia.  He was good friends with the youth minister at my church, Charlie Walls.  They had gotten a brilliant idea:  our two youth groups would work together to do campground ministry in Florida for a week in the summer of 1979 (the summer after my senior year in high school).  We met together during spring break to practice our musical numbers (we planned to do musical performances every night and hold Vacation Bible School every morning at the campground).

I just loved Dick!  He was so much fun!  He was very musical and so he ran the rehearsals.  He managed to get a group of about 40 kids to focus on what we were supposed to be doing for three long days of practicing, and make it seem more like sheer joy than hard work.  And when we traveled to Florida that summer, he cracked jokes with everybody, got to know all of us and made us feel special and appreciated.  I would have done anything for Dick.

But about a year later, I was talking with Charlie while I was home from college.  For some reason, I thought about that trip the previous summer, and asked if he had heard from Dick lately.  Well, it turned out that Dick had resigned his position from the church and had been divorced from his wife.  He had been carrying on an affair with the church organist and they had gotten married.  I was so shocked and disappointed and hurt.  I couldn’t believe that someone who seemed to be so strong of a Christian, and so wonderful of a role model for all of us young people, could do something like that.  Not only did he break his marriage vows and hurt his wife and children, but he also did harm to all of the youth that he had had in his youth groups.  We had looked up to him and seen him as an example of what we wanted to be like, and he had let us all down.

If I had been living in Jerusalem that spring long ago, I think I would have felt the same way about King David.  I would have felt like he had let me down, like he had disappointed me.  I would have watched as a good man fell from grace.

David kind of put himself in a position where it was easy for him to get in trouble.  For one thing, instead of going out with his army into battle, he stayed back home in Jerusalem.  The story doesn’t tell us why he did that.  We can only speculate.  Perhaps he was bored with military excursions.  After all, he had spent the better part of his life engaged in warfare against Saul, against the Philistines, against a whole host of other enemies.  Maybe he was just ready and willing to leave the whole thing in the hands of his trusted generals and take a break from it all.  I don’t know.  But I do know that his lack of official activity left him with too much time on his hands.

The second thing David did that contributed to his downfall was to take a second look at a beautiful woman who was not his wife.  He was walking around on the roof of the palace, where there was probably a patio, and he happened to notice a beautiful woman on a neighboring roof taking a bath.  Instead of looking away immediately, David took note of her and sent someone to find out who she was. As it turned out, she was Bathsheba, married to Uriah the Hittite, one of David’s soldiers who was off fighting in the war.  It shouldn’t have mattered who this woman was; she wasn’t his wife.  And he had no business getting involved with her.  He should never have allowed his lust to take control of his actions.

The third thing David did wrong was to pursue this woman.  Even though he knew that he was married, even though he knew that SHE was married, he still had her brought to him in the palace and he had sexual relations with her.  It borders on rape, really, because this woman had no choice in the matter.  If the king wanted to have sex with a woman, he had sex with her.  There was no discussion of her willingness.  It was his “right” as the king.  And he exercised that right with Bathsheba.  And Bathsheba soon notified David that she was pregnant with his child.

The fourth mistake David made was to plan an elaborate cover-up.  Instead of taking responsibility for his actions, perhaps admitting to Uriah what he had done and making some kind of arrangements to provide for the child’s needs, David decided to try and trick Uriah into thinking the child was his.  He had Uriah brought home from the front, believing that the man would surely take advantage of the opportunity to sleep with his wife while he was in Jerusalem.  But Uriah did not even go to his home at all.  He slept outside the palace with the king’s servants.  When David asked him why he didn’t go to his own home, Uriah explained that it wouldn’t be right for him to enjoy the comforts of home while all the other soldiers were still on the battlefield sleeping out in the open.  Even when David got Uriah drunk, he still did not go home to his wife.

Finally, David conspired to commit murder.  He wrote a letter to his general, Joab, and instructed him to place Uriah in the thick of the fighting and then pull back the troops so that Uriah would be sure to be killed in battle.  He gave this letter to Uriah to carry to Joab.  Joab followed David’s instructions, and Uriah was soon dead according to plan.  David had the blood of an innocent man on his hands.  And all because he couldn’t resist taking Uriah’s wife for himself.

What started out as a simple case of lust ended up as a cold-blooded, premeditated murder.  And a story of a good man who feel from grace.  David didn’t set out to commit murder.  And yet that is what happened in the end.  I remember when I was a kid and I got caught doing something wrong.  My excuse was usually, “I didn’t mean to.”  And my dad would say to me, “But you didn’t mean NOT to.”  In this case, David didn’t mean to commit murder, but he didn’t mean not to either.  He allowed his desires to get out of hand and it resulted in adultery and murder.

Anyone can find themselves in situations they never intended to be in.  And most of us probably have found ourselves there at least once.  We’ve given in to our own desires.  We’ve allowed ourselves to be led astray by temptations that seemed too big to resist.  We’ve either deliberately chosen to do the wrong thing, or we’ve wandered away from the right thing one tiny step at a time until we’re far from the ways of God.  But in any case, not one of us is guiltless, not one of us is sinless.  We can all relate to David in some way or another.

But God does not leave us there in our sinfulness.  God does not make that the end of our stories.  God offers us a way out, a way back to where we belong.  We’ll talk more about that next week.  But for now let it be enough to remember that our sin – our separation from God – is not where we have to remain.  It is up to us to respond to God’s grace and forgiveness by making our confession and choosing to repent of our sin, to change directions in our lives, and live the way God has called us to live.  When good men and good women fall from grace, our God makes a way to lift us up again.