April 28th | 2 Samuel 11
You Can't Cover Up Sin
Life is all about choices. We are faced with a barrage of choices every day. Some choices are trivial like, “What will we eat and what will we wear?” Others carry more meaning, “Where will my kids go to school? Will I choose this job with more money or this job with more time off?” All of these choices are moments where we can seek the Lord’s wisdom and where we can choose to honor God. Even in the trivial choices about clothing and food we can honor God by making choices that give him glory in our lives.
While life is about choices, we can all likely remember a choice in our life we could go back and change. There are plenty of moments I wish I could relive and make a different choice. However, we don’t have a time machine and so we must live with the choices we make. I am sure David wishes he could go back and make a different choice in the case of Bathsheba. It literally changed his life and the lives of countless others. One simple choice for sin and not for God brought great ruin to so many. We have a choice today. Will I choose Jesus or choose sin. If you are struggling to make choices that honor God, consider the effects of choosing sin.
1. Sin Blinds Us To Its Effect On Others
David was having a normal day and saw Bathsheba bathing on her roof. This could be an innocent situation. David had a choice. He could look away and go about his day. Unfortunately that is not what he did.
2 Sam 11:3-5,
“3 And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” 4 So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned to her house. 5 And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”
David sent and inquired. He knew she was married but he didn’t care. His choice to lust instead of look away blinded him to how his sin might affect Uriah and now this unborn child he would need to care for in the world. How are you blinded by sin? Stop and ask God to help you see clearly how your choices not only affect you but others in your life.
2. Sin Seeks To Cover Up & Hide
David finds out she is pregnant and so comes up with a plan. He’ll bring Uriah back from the war to lay with his wife. However, Uriah, an honorable man, stays with his men in the midst of war. Sin always seeks to cover up and hide and David doesn’t repent but thinks it will go away if he can just get Uriah home. Don’t hide your sin or seek to cover it up but repent!
3. Sin Always Brings Death
When the cover up did not work David sought to kill Uriah.
2 Sam 11:14-15, “14 In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. 15 In the letter he wrote, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, that he may be struck down, and die.”
While David brought actual death to Uriah, our sins lead to a spiritual death. We are constantly killing our relationship with God when we actively choose sin. Stop choosing death but say no to sin and choose life in Christ.
4. Sin Cannot Be Hidden From God
Uriah is dead, Bathsheba is now David’s wife and she bears him his son. In David’s mind, no one is the wiser. He has seemingly “gotten away” with adultery and murder. But God knows.
2 Sam 11:27,
“27 And 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.”
As much as we might try to hide our sin, it will be found out. Your choices have consequences. While David didn’t see repercussions in the world for his actions, Almighty God in heaven was displeased. Consequences were coming. We might try to get away with sin and hide from the consequences of our choices but they will be found out. God knows. Would you repent of sin today and choose to follow Christ in faithfulness?
