Oh, Lord, if we are. If we are before you today as your people. It is because we have been born of your spirit. It is because we have not simply seen your marvelous works, but we have become recipients of them. The power that you showed over and over and over again in the history of this world leading up to the coming of Christ has come to its great expression in the renewal of human souls, in the renewal of our souls. And Father, if we have indeed been renewed in that way by your Spirit, we have become your dwelling place. And if that is the case, then any shortfall of worship, any weakness in our worship, any absence of our worship is a lie against the truth. For we are by your power brought to the greatest intimacy conceivable. far greater than the one flesh union of marriage is the one spirit union of Christ with His people. And in the context of that intimacy, how can we be anything other than those whose lives are characterized by the constant communion of worship, in prayer, in praise, in meditation, in service, in delight, in joy, in faith, And so, Father, strengthen us again, even as we have sung, even as we have prayed, even as we have sat in front of us again today, the great privilege, the priority, the responsibility of faith. Cause us to see again, not only that you have called us to faith, but that you are the author and the perfecter of it. that we would stand at peace, that our zeal would be full and confident. Father, let us see in this time what you have done, who we are, the great blessedness that we have in being scripted into your grand narrative that will take everything and sum it up in the Lord Jesus Christ. Give us such a grand vision. Such a cosmic scope of thinking. Lead us. Teach us. Condescend to us in our weakness. Father, that Your glory might be our praise. We ask in Christ's name, Amen. We've considered Psalm 78 today. I didn't know for certain that Jerry was going to read it, but it's very appropriate to our consideration today. And hopefully, as he was reading that great narrative of Israel's history and the dynamic of the faithlessness of a people in contrast with the faith of God, that we were reminded that Israel's history with God, Israel's life with God, Israel's existence, was the outworking, the fruitfulness of the promise that God made to Abraham. God promised Abraham a kingdom. And that kingdom was to be the realization of sacred space. The recovery of what had been lost in the garden. The kingdom that God promised was that he would take the seed of Abraham and he would make that seed his son by covenant, by adoption. And he would take his son and he would deliver that son and bring him out of his slavery, out of his captivity and lead him to his own sanctuary land where the son would dwell with the father in perfect intimacy, in perfect fullness. And there the Lord would reign over the works of His hands through the imaged Son that He had restored and taken to Himself. The portrait of the recovery of sacred space. God dwelling with His imaged Son in His sanctuary land. And God did that work. And He brought the sons of Israel, the seed of Abraham, into His land. And He began to build this kingdom. And that kingdom came to its fullness in David. In many ways, the one who epitomizes the Son of God, the one who epitomizes the kingdom and its kingship. And the text highlights the fullness of that kingdom in David in the giving of the Davidic covenant. By that covenant, God promised a son. As David had been a son, God promised a son to David. And in that son, all of the covenant promises had their point of reference. God promised to build a dynasty for David in that son. He promised to establish his kingdom and his throne forever in that son. God promised to be a father to that son. Not only would that individual be the son of David, he would be uniquely and preeminently the son of God. And the glory of David's person, the glory of David's reign, the glory of David's relationship with God, the glory of Israel comes to its high point in that promise of God. In David, God brings the kingdom to its pinnacle of glory, its pinnacle of excellence. And yet at the same time, it was not to be long-lived. Almost immediately, as I've mentioned to you before, as soon as this pinnacle of the Davidic Kingdom is achieved in the Davidic Covenant, there is another episode, the Bathsheba episode. And if the Davidic Covenant is the pinnacle of David's life and David's reign and David's kingdom, then the Bathsheba episode is its low point. Its low point in the sense that that was the turning point in David's life in David's reign and in David's kingdom. It initiated the process of decline that would ultimately culminate with the total desecration and dissolution of David's kingdom. It was the beginning of the end for the glory and even the existence of David's kingdom. And that's what I would like to consider today And we're going to consider in part, in a broad sense, in totality chapter 11 through chapter 18 of 2 Samuel. But we're just going to pull out certain parts of it. And I hope that week to week you have some sense of where we're going. You have some sense of kind of what this is becoming as the picture is developing and that you're doing your own reading and you're staying up with where we are. Because, again, it's not my intention to go through verse by verse the whole Old Testament. But the things that we're considering and the themes that we're weaving together should inform and illumine and even glorify, in a sense, your own reading of the Old Testament as you go through it verse by verse. So, I want to consider, as we begin then, chapter 11 of 2 Samuel, the Bathsheba episode. The historical circumstance of this episode is that the writer takes note of the fact that in the springtime, as the winter breaks, as the weather becomes better, that was the time that nations fought wars. They couldn't fight at night because they couldn't see. They didn't have infrared headgear and infrared equipment on attack helicopters. They didn't fight at night and they didn't fight in the winter because the weather was inhospitable. But when the winter broke and the springtime began to emerge, that was the time when nations went out to war. And as Israel goes out and departs to engage the Ammonites in battle, a historical enemy of Israel, Ammon was one of the sons of Lot, along with his brother Moab. As the Israelites go out to engage the Ammonites in battle, the text says David remained behind. And while he's walking on the roof of his palace, Houses, and particularly palaces in that time, were built with flat patio sort of roof structures on top of them that you would get to through stairs. And David is walking on the roof of his palace and he happens to notice this young woman bathing down below him, a woman named Bathsheba. And he's immediately stricken with her beauty. He's taken with her beauty. And so he tells one of his servants, he calls the servant and he says, Who is that? Who is that woman? And the servant says, that is Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. One of your soldiers who's fighting with Joab, your general. And when David learns who she is and that her husband is away at war, he tells his servant, go and get her and bring her to me. Well, that's the basic setting of the episode. And David's sin now is manifested not simply in the fact that he takes this woman who's not his wife and he commits an act of adultery with her, but that he uses his authority to defile her. The servant goes and he says to Bathsheba, the king himself is calling for you. Well, she's not going to defy the order of the king of Israel. And probably at that time, she didn't even know why he was calling for her. David was the great champion, the great hero of Israel. But she comes. And again, because of his authority and her position under his authority, she yields to that authority and allows him to defile her. And you see that in the way that she even goes from him in her uncleanness. He defiles her. Well, The hope, obviously, is that David will be able to hide this sin from Israel and from her husband. But not very long afterwards, Bathsheba realizes that she is pregnant. And she knows David's the father because her husband's been away for some period of time. So she calls to David and says, I am with child. And immediately now, David sends for her husband, Uriah. He sends a servant to get Uriah and pull him off the battlefield and bring him back to Jerusalem under the pretense of him coming to give him a report of how the battle is going, how his general is doing, how his soldiers are doing, how is the battle going. But his real intent is to bring Uriah back to Jerusalem to give him time with his wife so that he will believe when he finds out that she's pregnant that he's the father. His intent is to deceive Uriah and to deceive all Israel. And in a profound irony to me, When Uriah comes back and David says, go to your house, be with your wife. First, he calls him in and he asks him, how's the battle going? How's Joab doing? How are things progressing with the Ammonites? After that little encounter, he says, go be with your wife. But Uriah lays outside of the king's door. He won't go to be with his wife. He says, how can I do that? How can I go and, in a sense, have some R&R and some time off with my wife when the ark is away from Jerusalem, when the sons of Israel are fighting with the Ammonites? My devotion to my King, my devotion to my people, my devotion to the cause of the kingdom is such that I'm not going to go be with my wife. I'm going to stay here at David's door. Let's pick this up in verse 9. Uriah slept at the door of the king's house with all the servants of his Lord and did not go down to his house. And now when they told David saying Uriah did not go down to his house, David said, Have you not come from a journey? Why did you not go down to your house? Don't you want to spend some time with your wife? You've been out fighting probably for at least a few months in battle. And Uriah said to David, the ark and Israel and Judah are staying in temporary shelters. And my Lord Joab and the servants of my Lord are camping in the open field. Shall I then go to my house and eat and drink and lie with my wife? By your life and the life of your soul, I will not do this thing." In the end, David is unable to get this man to go and be with his wife. David has defiled this man's wife. He is now seeking to deceive this man into believing that this child is his own child. And this man, out of his loyalty to David, his loyalty to the kingdom, his loyalty to the cause of the kingdom, won't do it. You can imagine the shame in David's own heart or what you would think would be the shame in his heart as he thinks about his own actions in contrast with this loyal, faithful man. But he's unable to prevail. He's unable to prevail. And when David realizes that he's not going to be able to get this man to go into his wife, he instead tells his general, Joab, the head of his armed forces, he says, when you return to the battlefield and you're engaging in the heat of battle, have the men around Uriah draw back. so that he'll be sure that he takes an arrow and dies. So David sends Uriah back to the battlefield with his blessing, and sure enough, just as he had instructed his general, in the heat of the battle they draw back, Uriah is killed. And as soon as they send a messenger to David to inform him that Uriah is dead, he takes Bathsheba as his wife. And no doubt at that point, he hoped that his deception, he hoped that his sin, he hoped that what he had done would not be revealed. If someone questioned the timing of Bathsheba's birth of her child in relation to when David married her, he could say, well remember, Uriah the Hittite was in Jerusalem around that time. I'm marrying a woman out of a sense of nobility. She has a child. She has a child coming. She'll need a husband. But Uriah was the father. And Uriah is dead. He can't say, yes, I was in Jerusalem, but I never went into my wife. And David's servants, who are aware of what has happened, certainly would never betray him. So David's hope is that he has escaped. He has pulled this off. But it would not be so. God is about to reveal what David has done. So we've seen David's sin, and I want you to see now the implication of David's sin. The way that this is even going to be worked out in the revelation to David of what he's done and what God now brings as consequences is going to show you the implications to David himself, but also more broadly, the implications to his kingdom. As far as it pertains to David himself, remember that when Israel first asked for a king, a human king, God said, well, I will give you a king, but first understand what a king will be. Any king, any king that you will have will rule according to the procedure of the king. He will take his authority, he will take his power, he will take his resource, and he will use it to his own advantage. He will take your daughters to work in his palace and clean it and cook for him. He'll take your sons to fight in his wars. He'll take taxes from you. He will exploit what is available to him for his own good. That is the procedure of the king, as we've seen. And Saul proved to be that sort of a king, and God rejected him. And God raised up David and David, by all appearances, seems to be an exception to that rule. That a human king will rule according to the procedure of the king and the obvious implication, as we saw earlier, with respect to God saying, I'll give you a king, but this is what it'll be like is that God was saying, I'm not that sort of a king. Everything belongs to me. All authority is mine. All power is mine. Not just over the kingdom of Israel, but over all of the creation. But I don't exploit my authority and my power and my resource to your detriment. You are forsaking a true king when you forsake me and ask for a human king. But now David seems to be an exception. David is raised up and God himself affirms David as a man after his own heart. God sets David in contrast to Saul. Saul is the picture of the king, the human king, who will rule in a self-serving, self-preserving sort of way. And David is set apart as a man after God's own heart. More than that, he is raised up. He's a descendant of the prophesied regal tribe of Judah. Now, that doesn't mean necessarily that he's the one, but he's of the right tribe, and Saul was not. David is also affirmed everywhere to be a true shepherd. God takes him from shepherding, even as we saw in Psalm 78. He takes him from the sheepfold. And the shepherding role is one of caring and nurturing and concern in the context of no self-concern. David snatched his father's sheep from the mouth of the lion and the bear. David was willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of the sheep. He was a true shepherd. And God said, I took you from the sheepfold to shepherd my people Israel. That will come up in a moment. So he shows himself to be a different kind of ruler. And most especially, God has just made a covenant with David. to establish his house, his throne, his kingdom forever. And so every indication is that David is a different sort of ruler. But now, coming immediately out of the glorious radiance, basking in the light of the covenant with David, comes this episode with Bathsheba. And what it shows us, the implication of David's sin, is that David is repeating in himself Saul's sin. The very man who himself was subjected to the procedure of the king, David himself under Saul was subjected to the abuse of power, to conspiracy, to deception, to malicious intent. to murder. Attempted murder, at least. He had experienced all those things at the hand of Saul. All the while being Saul's devoted, faithful servant. Dedicated to the Lord's anointed. And exactly the same thing is now happening with David. Abuse of power, conspiracy, deception, malicious intent, directed against a faithful, loyal servant of the king. David has become Saul, in effect, by this episode. And when I say David has become Saul, I mean simply this. David has shown himself to not be distinct. He's shown himself to be just another human ruler. He's shown himself to be another man who will rule according to the procedure of the king. For all of David's excellencies, as the Lord's chosen anointed, David is just another king, another man who will rule according to the procedure of the king. And the implication of all of that is that the hope that was wrapped up in David is now lost. If the royal promise that began, in a sense, all the way back in Genesis but has been developed through the patriarchal period, the promise of a ruler for Israel, the promise of a royal Abrahamic seed, a true shepherd king, a true son of Yahweh who will shepherd his people faithfully. If that promise is to be fulfilled, it's going to have to be in someone other than David. This failure is determinative in the text in terms of how we're to think about David. Well, God now will not allow David's sin to remain hidden. And so he sends his prophet, Nathan, the same one that David approached about building the house of Yahweh. The same prophet who God used to give to David the Davidic covenant, is now coming against David. If you pick this up in chapter 12 now, Nathan comes to David. And before we start reading God's judgment against David, I want to, and hopefully this is already in your mind, but I can speak personally and say every time I've heard the Bathsheba episode dealt with in the pulpit or a Sunday school class or whatever, it's always used as a lesson in the danger of unguarded eyes and unchecked lust. the outcome, the disaster that comes from us not guarding our eyes, particularly as men, and not disciplining our lust. But the true meaning of this event has nothing to do with that. Now, I'm not saying that there can't be some sort of sense that we can derive that, but the point is not that. The point of the story is not that. The true meaning, the true importance of this episode with Bathsheba, those things are found in relation to this developing story of redemption. In other words, David's failure reaches beyond simply his own personal failure as a man, and therefore an exemplar for us as men. It goes vastly beyond his own personal failure to to implicate David's own place and contribution in God's accomplishment of this promise that began in Genesis 3. The significance of David's failure is not just that he was a man, and this is what happens to men when they don't guard themselves. That's my point. The significance of it is found in David's own role, and more specifically, the Davidic covenant that we've just seen. This is always what happens to our interpretation of the Bible when we deal with the text very narrowly. If all that you knew in the Old Testament, you happen to flip it open and you turn to 2 Samuel 11, and you say, now how am I going to preach this? Well, the obvious idea that comes out is guard your eyes and control your lust. Because you don't know the surrounding story, but we do. So as we unfold now, what God tells Nathan to tell David, think in those terms. Because what God is going to reveal to David through Nathan, David understands the significance of what God is pronouncing concerning him. The way in which Nathan will confront David makes it evident that this is implicating David's kingdom and his covenant with him. Well, Nathan uses a parable. to bring David to understand the true nature and true significance of what he's done. And we all know the parable. I'm not going to go through it. At least I hope that you know the parable. But the point is, again, that you have a man who is very wealthy and to feed or provide for his guest. He won't sacrifice one of his own a sheep or a lamb from his own flock, but he takes the one lamb that belongs to a companion or a neighbor of his, and he seizes that lamb because he can. And he kills it and he sacrifices it to feed his friend. And David is outraged at the abuse of power. And Nathan says, you are the man. You are the man. That's what you have done, David. That's what you have done to Uriah the Hittite. Well, after revealing to him, getting him to see what it is that he's really done, he begins to unfold to David the consequences of his actions. And as we read this, the first of these consequences is intrinsic or innate. In other words, it's not a punishment that God pronounces. It's just innate to what David has done. An intrinsic consequence. Let's read this beginning at verse 7, chapter 12. Nathan then said to David, You are the man. Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel. It is I who anointed you king over Israel, and it is I who delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave you your master's house, and I gave into your hands your master's wives. I gave you full authority, full possession of Saul's house, his dominion. I gave you the house of Israel and the house of Judah, and if that had been too little, I would have added to you many more things like these. Why have you then despised the word of Yahweh by doing evil in his sight? And despising the word of the Lord means all that God had done for David, and especially what God had revealed to him in connection with the covenant. Why have you despised the word of the Lord by doing evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword. You've taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the sons of Ammon. Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house because you have despised me and you have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. Therefore, thus says Yahweh, behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household. I will even take your wives from before your eyes and I will give them to your companion, to someone very close to you, an intimate, a person intimate with you, a close companion, a neighbor. And he shall lie with your wives in broad daylight. Indeed, you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel under the sun. Not only before Israel, but before the eyes of the nations as well. And David said to Nathan, I have sinned against Yahweh. And Nathan said to David, the Lord also has taken away your sin. You shall not die. But because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of Yahweh to blaspheme, the child that is born to you shall surely die. So Nathan went to his house. The first consequence is innate. It's intrinsic. It's not God's punishment per se. It's an outcome based, again, on just the nature of David and his reign. And I've said this before, in the ancient Near East, the conception was most commonly that a ruling king was divine. He was a son of one or more of the gods of his nation. He was divine. Pharaoh was a god. in his own culture, within his own understanding. Kings were sons of their gods. And so, the strength of their reign, the strength of their character, the weakness of their character, the way they reigned, how they reigned, the success of their reign, the way in which their lives were ordered, all of those things reflected back on their divine Father, the God who had begotten them. So, a weak nation meant weak gods. A weak king meant weak gods. Well, that way of thinking was, again, throughout the Middle East, and God used that way of thinking about kingship and kingdom in order to fulfill what he had mandated to Abraham. In other words, God had said to Abraham, through you, through your seed, through your descendants, all the families of the earth will be blessed. By God's design, the world would come to learn about Him, would come to understand Him by observing His people, His covenant Son, be faithful to the covenant. When Israel lived in conformity to the covenant, in other words, when Israel lived out its sonship with Yahweh, the nations would not only learn what God was like, come to the knowledge of the true God, but they would learn what sonship is about. They would learn what it really looks like to be sons of this God. So in that way, the nations would come to know God. That was the essence of the blessing. Through you, Abraham, all the families of the earth will be blessed. That was how that was to be worked out. The witness of Israel to the world was to be through its faithfulness to the covenant, its faithfulness to God, its faithfulness, its life as a son of God. And if that was true of the nation, it was true preeminently of the king, because the king was even regarded as, in some sense, the son of God. And God speaks of David in that way, but the other nations would have looked at David and said, in this one particularly, we're going to learn about God, who is his father. Israel's king was regarded as the son of Israel's God. So David's actions, David's reign, David's kingdom reflect back on Yahweh. They reflect back on Yahweh. So, Nathan declares to David that his actions had implications beyond his own house, even beyond his own nation. What he had done had implications that transcended his own people, his own life, his own family. Uriah, Bathsheba. Nathan tells him that you have given the enemies of God reason to blaspheme him. If David has failed, this is the innate implication. God hasn't pronounced a punishment on him, but what we see as a consequence, or an innate consequence, is the fact that if David has failed to be the promised king, the Abrahamic royal seed, the true shepherd of Israel, if he's failed in that regard, and he has, he's another Saul, he's another man who rules according to the procedure of the king, he's also failed to be another seed of Abraham. He's failed to be that seed. Remember again, the central principle, the central characteristic of Abraham's descendants is that they were to be the ministers of the knowledge of God to all the families of the earth. Go back and read those accounts in Genesis and you'll see the references in the notes again. You should probably already be familiar with it. But first to Abraham, then to Isaac, then to Jacob, God said, through you, through your seed, through your descendants, all the families of the earth will be blessed. That was the central characteristic of Abraham's seed, is that they would be the mediators, the vehicles to bring the knowledge of God to all of the world. And Israel was that seed. Israel was the seed of Abraham. And if Israel was the seed of Abraham, David, as the preeminent, the epitomizing Israelite, was really the seed of Abraham. And David, who, as much as it was his nation's charter, it was David's charter, as one who was already viewed by the nations as representative of the God that he served, the God whose nation he rules over, he's already viewed by the nations preeminently as the one in whom they learn about the God of Israel. And so his failure is cataclysmic. David is shown not only to not be the true king of Israel, he's shown to not be the true seed of Abraham. The nation from the beginning has failed to fulfill its mandate to cause the nations around them to know Yahweh, and now their king, the great king David, has failed in that mandate. He's failed spectacularly. Not only has he not presented a faithful witness, Nathan charges him with the fact that you have caused the nations to blaspheme Yahweh. Not to know Him and worship Him and come to Him, but to mock Him and to blaspheme Him. As much as the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise is being shown more and more to demand a new Israel, it's now equally shown to demand a new David. That's the point of David's sin. Not guard your eyes when you go out in public, when you go to the swimming pool or whatever. However wise advice that may be, that's not the point of the story. So the first consequence is innate because of who David is, because of what he represents to his own nation and to those that are watching, and what he represents as the seed of Abraham. The consequence of his sin is monumental, far beyond himself and his own family, or Bathsheba, or Uriah. But God now also pronounces two punitive consequences, two punishments upon David. The first consequence is just bound up in who David is. The second consequence, and it's really in two parts, are punitive. They are punishments. The first is that God is going to take the child of that union. He's going to take the life of that child. The second amounts to an extension of the first. God is going to take the life of this child who's the son of David. But God also says that from this point forward, unending enmity, strife, conflict, death, and destruction are going to characterize your house. He explains that simply by his declaration, the sword will never depart from your house. Even David himself is to feel the edge of the sword of Yahweh's punishment. So those are the things that are the punishments that come upon David, and even, again, an implication in terms of what it is that he's done himself. But what are ultimately now the implications of God's judgment? How do these judgments of God really play out in terms of the story of David, the story of his role in salvation history? Well, again, in verse 11, God doesn't disclose this particular punishment to David. Let's read it again. Verses 10 through 12. Let's read those. The sword shall never depart from your house because you have despised me. You've taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. Therefore, thus says Yahweh, I will raise up evil against you from your own household. I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he shall lie with your wives in broad daylight. You did this secretly, but I will do this thing before Israel and under the sun. the nations will see as well. God does not disclose that particular punishment in verse 11 so that David will understand it's not just the son that's going to die and I get off the hook. It's not to remedy that thinking. God doesn't tell him what this punishment is going to be that's going to come against him just so he'll know that he too is going to directly suffer. Not just suffer in the loss of his son, but that in a sense the sword is coming upon him personally. That's not the reason for this. The reason that God reveals this particular punishment upon David, which is kind of a summarizing, epitomizing kind of punishment that is given to us again in verse 11, is so that David will correlate the judgment that's come upon him with the covenant before. In other words, God told David that when he made his covenant with him, the heart of the covenant pertained to David's house. God was going to establish and build David's house, which means David's dynasty, his immediate line of descent, and also his kingdom, his dominion, his broader house, his kingdom house. And in the same way, the judgment pertains to the same two aspects or facets of David's house. To his immediate household, but also to the house that is his Dominion is kingdom. That becomes very evident to us. It becomes explicit in the fulfillment of verse 11. Who is the companion, the close relation, or not even maybe relation, but the person who has an intimate closeness with David, who will fulfill this? It's Absalom. And that's recorded for us in chapter 16. I'm not going to take the time. Well, I will take the time to read that passage. At least a part of it and then and then explain what it is that I'm getting at. Remember, again, the point I'm making is, why did God reveal this specific punishment to David? Is it just to get back at him? You slept with Bathsheba secretly. I'm going to now have your wives be defiled publicly. Well, that's what God says. But there's a greater significance to it. It's not just so that David sees he's going to suffer directly. The sword's going to be raised up against himself, personally, by God raising up evil in his house. And this is the epitomizing evil, but because of how this plays out with the covenant. Chapter 16, let's just pick this up at verse 20. Now what's happened here is Absalom has essentially begun his assault against the throne of David. And I'll explain how that all came about in a minute. But Absalom says to Ahithophel, who is one of his confidants, a man who has come over from David to help Absalom, David's son, in his cause. He says, give your advice. What shall we do? And Ahithophel said to Absalom, go into your father's concubines, whom he has left to keep the house. And then all Israel will hear that you have made yourself odious to your father. The hands of all who are with you will be strengthened. So they pitched the tent for Absalom on the roof of David's house. And Absalom went into his father's concubines in the sight of all Israel. When God says the sword will never depart from your house, it implicates his own immediate family and his own kingdom. In the near term, David's family is going to be torn apart. But the greater punishment, the greater outcome, is going to be that David's kingdom is going to be torn apart. The greatest mark of that, as it's unfolding, is the division of the kingdom into two sub-kingdoms. David brought together the tribes of Israel. Now his punishment is that they're going to be ripped apart. The kingdom will be divided. into two sub-kingdoms. And eventually both of those kingdoms are going to head down their own trajectory towards captivity and desolation. Both houses of Israel are to be devastated. When God says I'm going to bring the sword against you, against your house, that's where it's ultimately going. But it does begin in his own household. And amazingly God uses And we don't have time to read all this, but God uses something that is very profoundly ironic with what David has done. He uses a circumstance in order to be the catalyst for this process. David has his oldest son. He had six sons born to him in Hebron. God has taken the life of this one child, not his only son, but by taking that one son, God is testifying to the fact that there is There is a tearing apart of David's dynasty. God is coming against David's household. He's coming against his dynasty. And it flows itself out. Amnon, David's first son, born to him in Hebron, Amnon becomes infatuated with his half-sister, Tamar. And through a process of deception, he brings her to himself. And when she realizes what his intent is, she says, don't do this. Ask my father and he'll give me to you to be your wife. Don't defile me in this way. But he wouldn't listen to her. And he was stronger than her. See, David's strength was in his authority as king. But Amnon is stronger than his half-sister. And so he overcomes her and he rapes her. And then she says, even after the fact, make this right by taking me to be your wife. And he says, no. As much as he loved her before, he now despises her and he sends her away in shame and humiliation. And the long sleeves garment that the young girls would wear to testify to their virginity, she rips them. And right away, her brother, her full brother, who is Absalom, David's third son, learns what Amnon has done. And David is told. And David is outraged, but the text doesn't say he did anything. And Absalom is furious. And he has this resentment of his father and this hatred of his half-brother Amnon. And time goes by. And Absalom seizes the opportunity to kill his brother Amnon. The sword has begun its process in David's house. The very deception, the very qualities of David that initiated the problem are now replicated in his son. And those very things in his son are the catalyst for the unfolding of God's judgment against David. And now the thing is beginning to unravel. It's beginning to unravel. David finds out that Absalom has killed Amnon. And of course, he's very upset. Absalom ends up fleeing. But eventually, through Joab's involvement, Absalom is brought back. But David won't meet with him. He spends two years in Jerusalem and David won't meet with him. And he finally says, I might as well just go back out because my father won't even meet with me. Well, through this whole process, Absalom begins his resentment of his father, his hatred of his father culminates with his attempt upon the throne of his father. Absalom begins this process of cultivating the allegiance and the affections, the loyalties of the sons of Israel for himself. He sets up a kind of counsel a princely station, I don't know what you'd call it, at the gate of Jerusalem, where he meets with those who have complaints and judgments, problems with their fellow Israelite. And he begins to preside over these, like a princely court. And he begins to win the hearts of the people, probably over a process of four years. And finally, the time is right for him to make an assault on the throne. And the way that he does that is through this episode with David's concubines. If you go to 1 Kings 2, where Adonijah, another son of David, when Solomon takes the throne, Adonijah, who thought he should have had the throne, he was an older son, he thought he should have had the throne, he sends Bathsheba to Solomon to say, well, at least can I have David's one concubine? And Solomon is furious. He says, you might as well just give him my father's kingdom. Because the point is that by taking the harem, by taking the concubines, by taking the possession of the king, you're effectively taking his authority. So what Absalom is doing is going up and in the sight of all Israel taking David's concubines to himself, he's proclaiming his appropriation of David's kingdom and David's throne. That's the significance of God being explicit about how evil is going to be raised up against David. That's not the only way evil is going to be raised up against David, but that's the epitomizing way because it speaks to, again, how it is that the sword will not depart from David's house. It tells David that the judgment pertains not just to his immediate household, but to his kingship, his kingdom. House as dynasty and dominion. It reflects back again on the Davidic covenant. So again, to grasp the full significance of God's judgment on David and his house, you have to interpret it in the light of the Davidic covenant. That's the larger context for what's being revealed here, as we look at what's happening with David. God is taking his son. God is now coming against David's house. God had told David what? In the covenant, God said, I will establish your house. I will build your house. And now God is coming against David's house. The tearing down of David's house, as we've seen, is further indicated in this process that moves from Amnon with Tamar, then with Absalom, ultimately with Adonijah. Solomon will have Adonijah, his brother, killed. The sword in David's house, it just keeps escalating and escalating and escalating. So God's description of the judgment to come upon David back in chapter 12, verse 11, God's specific description of this judgment to come upon David provides the initial explicit indication that David's kingdom is destined to fail. Just as David has been shown already to be like Saul, to not be the true king that God has been promising, his kingdom is not the true kingdom. It will fail. This is the first explicit indication of that. And we know the way the story works, that it ends up there. The kingdom is divided. Then it goes away. First, the northern kingdom goes into captivity and desolation, never to be restored. Then the southern kingdom goes into captivity and desolation with only a remnant restored. But not David's kingdom. No Davidic son on the throne of Israel. And eventually David's line itself will be severed, his royal line. God is setting himself against David's kingdom, David's house, David's dynasty. So when we consider this event with Bathsheba and particularly God's judgment, and we consider it together with the way the judgment works itself out historically going forward, And the way that it implicates the Davidic covenant that came before it, we're left with an unavoidable sense of a problem. We're left with the unavoidable sense that this circumstance with Bathsheba has resulted in God's rejecting His covenant with David. That's what you're to come away with here. This is set in sharp relief with the Davidic Covenant. You have the setting up in the biblical storyline a very overt and very powerful tension. On the one hand, God has pledged in the Davidic Covenant, again, to build a house for David. And that house means a dynasty. He will have a son who will be the progenitor of a royal line. David will have a royal seed. He will have a line of kings, a dynasty come out of him. And through that dynasty, through that one son, God will establish David's throne and David's kingdom forever. But those same elements of house, throne and kingdom are the main elements in the judgment. So, in his covenant with David, God promised to build and establish a house, a throne, and a kingdom. And now, in the judgment, God has sworn to tear down a house, a throne, and a kingdom. That alone sets up a difficulty. That alone sets up a difficulty in the movement of salvation history and how it is that God is going to keep his word. It sets up a difficulty, a dilemma. But the difficulty is fully realized when we put the time value into it. In other words, God could tear down and build at different times. As long as these are non-simultaneous, you don't have necessarily a problem, right? A can only not equal non-A at the same time in the same way to the same extent. A can equal non-A at different times in different ways and to a different extent. The principle of logic, simple logic. So if God says, I'm going to build a house, a throne, and a kingdom, and now he says, I'm going to tear it down in judgment against you, our first response would be to say, well, they must not be simultaneous actions. They must refer to different times. But the difficulty really becomes settled when we realize that both the covenant promise and now the sworn judgment have an everlasting aspect to them. I will establish your house, your throne, and your kingdom forever. But the sword will not depart from your house forever. Now they can't operate at different times. They operate within the same realm because forever is forever. When each of the promise of the covenant and the judgment of according to David's sin, when they're seen to be perpetual, there seems to be no way to uphold both. And when the judgment comes after the covenant, what is the indication? The judgment has supplanted the covenant. Right? The indication is now that God has rejected His covenant with David. You see, this is more than just guard your eyes when you go to the swimming pool. This is more than just David the baby is going to die. Well, is the baby in heaven? Is the baby not in heaven? This isn't a proof text for the salvation of infants. The implication here is that what God has sworn to David, what he has pledged to him in the covenant, is now being ripped away. How can you have both? And because this is the response to David's unfaithfulness to be the king that God called him to be, the obvious conclusion is that God is now rejecting David, and specifically he's rejecting the covenant that he made with David. So the gravity of this dilemma is really seen when we recognize the scope of David's role, the scope and implications, the importance of the Davidic Covenant. This isn't just now that God's going to bring death and problems in David's family. When we understand the role of the Davidic Covenant in salvation history, If God is rejecting His covenant now with David, all of His promises back to Genesis 3 are gone. Because all of that was taken up in the Davidic covenant. The promise of a seed of the woman. The promise of a kingdom to Abraham. The promise of a seed of Abraham in whom all the families of the earth will be blessed. The promise of a king of Judah. A seed of David who will sit on the throne, who will rule over Yahweh's kingdom and His people forever. If the Davidic covenant is going away, then all of God's Word prior to that, all of His promises are going away. That's the significance of what is happening here. All the way back to the garden, everything that God has said, everything that His people have hoped in, all of that is gone. And this tension now will become the point of focus for Israel's faith from this point forward. As you read the scripture, and I've said this to you before, even as everything, all of God's promises, all of His covenants, all of His dealings up to this point are now taken up in and embodied in the Davidic covenant. So from this point forward, the Davidic covenant is the point of reference in God's fulfillment of that ancient promise of a seed, of a king, of a servant, of a witness, of a disciple, of an Israel. Everything is bound up now in the Davidic covenant. But from this point forward, every indication is that God is done. He's done with this covenant. Everything that meets their eyes, Every day now, as this folds out, it's going to be increasing desolation, destruction, hardship in David's own life, in David's family, in David's kingdom, until the day when Israel and Judah go into captivity. And even when a little remnant from Judah comes back, the prophets are going to make it clear, this is not David's kingdom. Most importantly, because there's no son of David on the throne. And there can't be a son of David on the throne because God has severed that line in Jehoiakim before the captivity of Judah. So the tension becomes profound. All of Israel's faith is bound up from this point forward in God's commitment to His covenant with David. Should Israel believe what it sees, what it's experiencing, what its circumstances are, or should it believe God's promise? How can God promise to build the house and the throne in the kingdom of David, and then in the very next sentence, so to speak, say, I'm tearing it down. That's the obligation of Israel's faith. How can you believe the impossible? And everything that you see testifies against God fulfilling that promise. If nothing else does, the cutting off of David's line would seem to indicate it's done. God is done. When he gets to Jehoiakim, he says, I'm done. No son of yours will ever sit on the throne of Israel or rule over my people. Well, Jehoiakim is in that line of the kings of Judah. He's a part of that dynasty. The dynasty severed. It's the same thing we saw with Abraham. Abraham is the picture of faith because God put all of His promises to Abraham. All of the confidence of God's keeping His Word to Abraham was bound up in Isaac. The miracle child. The child of promise. It's not Ishmael. He's the child of the flesh. This is the child of promise. The child of the power of God. The miracle child. And now God says, go and kill him. How can God keep his promise when A can't be non-A? This is the essence of faith. Faith is when we believe God in spite of everything that we can see and understand and experience, arguing against it. Faith is not sight. Sight is judgment and conclusions and reasonable expectations based on what we can measure and experience. and what our history tells us, and what previous actions tell us, and what the odds tell us. That's sight. Faith is believing God when everything argues against it. And doesn't that make sense? God is going to be most glorified when we simply trust Him because of who He is. Not because He's given us indications. Not because there's evidence. God says, do you trust me? Do you believe I'm a God who keeps my word? Stop looking around at you, at things around you. Stop looking at your circumstances. Stop trying to find earthly answers and earthly resources. Do you believe me? And God loves to set up impossibility in order to prove his power, his faithfulness. Didn't Paul say that? Paul looked at himself and he said, I'm the chief of sinners. And the truth is, if we look at ourselves, we might say, and we ought probably to say, no, if people knew me, they'd know I'm the chief of sinners. But Paul could look at himself and he could say, God saved me, the chief, in order that by being the chief and being the recipient of God's saving mercy, it would give hope and encouragement to everybody else. In other words, if God can save Paul, Saul of Tarsus, God can save everyone. He can save anyone. If Paul, the quintessential, devoted, pietistic, self-righteous, observant Jew, could receive the mercy of God in Christ and be converted, then no one is beyond his power. And God delights in doing the impossible. He delights in doing the impossible. So from this point forward, the whole of the Old Testament storyline is grounded in this tension. God has made a promise to David that catapults out this promise of fulfillment in a seed out into the future. But everything that's happening in the storyline is saying it's going away, it's going away, it's going away. That's the way you read Daniel. You come to the book of Daniel and it's gone. Israel's gone. They're in captivity. They're not to be restored. Judah's in captivity, in subjection to the world empire, powerless, defeated. David's line is gone. His house, his kingdom, his throne, everything is gone. No reason for hope. No reason for confidence. And yet the whole theme of the book of Daniel is that God is still the Lord of the kings of this earth. He sets over these kingdoms whoever he wills. And the seed is coming. You can't see how. It seems impossible. How can it be? But you look at chapter 2 and you look at chapter 4 and you look at chapter 7. Particularly in chapter 7, the revealing of one like a son of man. To him is given glory and honor and a kingdom. This is the way we have to read the Scripture from this point forward. Can God keep his promise when his promise and his judgment are irreconcilable? In human judgment, in human understanding. Can Israel believe God? And when you read the Davidic Psalms, that's the pressure. God, you've thrown David's crown into the dust, but I know that you will remember your faithful mercies to David, your covenant. I know, I know, I know. This is the meaning of the Bathsheba episode. This is what we should take from it. What it means to have faith. what it means to trust God. Let's pray. Father, teach us this lesson. It's so easy for us to learn doctrine. It's so easy for us to learn what a religious life looks like. It's so easy for us to conform our behavior, our dress, our mannerisms, our verbiage. It's so easy for us to conform everything to religious practice, to Christian conception, to an agreement with Christian doctrine. But Father, all of that is sight. All of it is meaningless. Even as Paul could say, whatever is not of faith is sin. We can do everything according to sight. And we can convince ourselves that we believe You and that we trust You and that we're following after You and that we're honoring You when we're living by sight. Father, teach us what it means to live by faith. That is when we will be a witness to the nations. That is when we will fulfill our Abrahamic calling to bring Your blessing, the knowledge of You, to all the families of the earth. When people can see that we don't live by circumstance, or situation, that we don't find our hope in what we see in ourselves, in our behavior, in our understanding, in our doctrine, in our quote-unquote good lives. But when in all things they see that our hope is in you, that's the blessedness of suffering in this life. It's not just that it makes us stronger. It's that it compels us to live by faith. To believe not our experience, but to believe you. And to let the world see that we believe you. Then you are glorified. Then you are revealed. Then the nations will sing your praise rather than blaspheme you. But Father, too often, like David, we live according to the procedure of the King. We take resource and and everything available to us to serve our own advantage. And we sanctify it and we call it doing your will. Teach us what it means to live by faith. Teach us what it means to live into the reality of our new and our true humanity in Christ, who is the true David, the true Israel, the true seed of Abraham, the true seed of the woman, the true man of faith. Teach us what it is to live in that way. And then we will be living a life of integrity. Then we will be living according to who it is that we really are. We ask these things of you, Father, with the dependent, confident hope that is ours in Christ. Amen.