THE BIBLE MEETS LIFE
Let’s admit it: we’ve all been amazed by a magician’s trick or illusion. Whether it was making his assistant disappear, sawing a person in half, or even a sleight-of-hand card trick, we’ve wondered: How did he do that?
Later, if we discover how he created the illusion, our amazement vanishes as quickly as the assistant. The next time we see that illusion, it seems so obvious what’s actually going on. What changed? We were able to see things from the magician’s perspective.
The way we see people can play tricks on us, too. Our perception or opinion of a person can be skewed by our own prejudices and selfcenteredness, or even by how we hope that person can benefit us. We can be blinded by our own sinfulness.
But when we see people from God’s perspective—the One who created us in His image—relationships change. In a famous story from 2 Samuel 11, King David gave us a tragic example of what happens when we fail to see people from God’s perspective.
WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY?
2 Samuel 11:1-4
1 In the spring when kings march out to war, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah, but David remained in Jerusalem. 2 One evening David got up from his bed and strolled around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing — a very beautiful woman. 3 So David sent someone to inquire about her, and he said, “Isn’t this Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam and wife of Uriah the Hittite?” 4 David sent messengers to get her, and when she came to him, he slept with her. Now she had just been purifying herself from her uncleanness. Afterward, she returned home.
Sin comes in all sizes and shapes. Some sins are blatantly obvious, others hide in the shadows where we think no one else can see. We tend to categorize some sins as worse than others, but they all share two things in common: all sin is rebellion against God, and all sin begins in the heart.
We see in David a prime example that sin begins in the heart. That may seem ironic, since Scripture refers to David as a man after God’s own heart (see 1 Sam. 13:14; Acts 13:22). Yet he was still a man with a sinful nature—one that was on display throughout his encounters with Bathsheba, her husband, and the many people who witnessed the actions of a man who was supposed to represent God’s righteousness as their king.
As we dig into the text, we’ll find three key stages of David’s downward spiral into sin.
1. David looked at Bathsheba. Walking on the rooftop of his palace, David happened to see “a very beautiful woman” bathing. No harm done—yet. It’s easy to see things we shouldn’t, especially in today’s culture. The problem is that David didn’t just glance at Bathsheba and then avert his eyes. He looked, and he kept looking.
2. David asked about Bathsheba. David gazed long enough for his “accidental” sighting to turn to lust. Then he wanted to know who he was lusting for. In the space of a moment, David stopped viewing Bathsheba as a woman made in the image of God. Instead, she became nothing more than an object for his enjoyment.
3. David sent for Bathsheba. Having reduced Bathsheba to an object in his mind, David used his power as king to grab what he desired. We don’t know if Bathsheba responded to David’s summons out of fear or ignorance—nor do we know at what point she understood David’s intentions. What we do know is that Bathsheba’s motives are not the point of the story. It’s David’s motives, as well as his actions, that deserve our scrutiny.
Discussions of this passage usually center on the sin of adultery, which is understandable. Sex outside a marriage relationship was explicitly prohibited in the law (see Ex. 20:14), and David certainly knew that. But behind David’s willingness to commit adultery was an equally grievous sin: failing to see Bathsheba’s worth as a person created by God in His own image.
Put simply, David failed to see Bathsheba as God saw her—and that failure opened the door to sin.
The apostle Paul connected our treatment of others to our walk with Christ. He said God’s will is “that each of you knows how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not with lustful passions. … This means one must not transgress against and take advantage of a brother or sister in this manner” (1 Thess. 4:4-6, emphasis added).
The way we treat others is supposed to be based on the way God has treated us. Therefore, when we walk with Christ, we see people from His perspective—and we treat them accordingly.
2 Samuel 11:5-9,14-17
5 The woman conceived and sent word to inform David: “I am pregnant.” 6 David sent orders to Joab: “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” So Joab sent Uriah to David. 7 When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab and the troops were doing and how the war was going. 8 Then he said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet.” So Uriah left the palace, and a gift from the king followed him. 9 But Uriah slept at the door of the palace with all his master’s servants; he did not go down to his house … .
14 The next morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. 15 In the letter he wrote: Put Uriah at the front of the fiercest fighting, then withdraw from him so that he is struck down and dies. 16 When Joab was besieging the city, he put Uriah in the place where he knew the best enemy soldiers were. 17 Then the men of the city came out and attacked Joab, and some of the men from David’s soldiers fell in battle; Uriah the Hittite also died.
David’s downward spiral into sin led him further and further away from intimacy with God. Instead of confronting and confessing his mistakes, David sought to cover up his actions—which led to more sin.
David didn’t value Bathsheba and had used her for his own ends; now, David tried to use her husband, Uriah, to cover up his infidelity. The king planned for Uriah to go home and sleep with his wife while he was in Jerusalem, leading everyone to assume Uriah was responsible for Bathsheba’s pregnancy.
In spite of David’s instructions, Uriah was obedient to the king in another way. He wasn’t a soldier on leave; he was a soldier still on duty. Therefore, he was determined to remain ritually pure—which meant refraining from sexual intimacy with his wife (see Lev. 15:18; 1 Sam. 21:5).
In other words, Uriah showed a greater obedience to his king and a clear devotion to the Lord.
Because of Uriah’s unwavering loyalty and commitment, David’s Plan A was unsuccessful. So, David resorted to Plan B: “David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah.” Loyal Uriah unknowingly carried his own death sentence to Joab!
It’s hard to see David here as the same man who would not lay a hand on Saul, even when Saul sought to kill him. David presents a tragic example of what sin does when we don’t confess it, but instead allow it to spread.
Let’s go back to the beginning and see where it all started: David was self-focused. He failed to see people—neither Bathsheba nor Uriah—as God sees them, and he used both of them for his own ends. His self-focused actions led to self-preservation at all costs.
Jesus calls us to a different standard. We are to carry with us the same servant attitude that marks the life of Christ. As Paul wrote: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:3-5).
Had David lived by this principle, he would have placed the truth and the life of Uriah ahead of his own. Of course, had David lived by this principle in the beginning, he would have placed the worth of Bathsheba before his own desires. He never would have gotten into that whole mess in the first place!
We can do better. We can see people as Christ sees them. We can treat them with the dignity and worth Christ has given them.
LIVE IT OUT
What steps will you take this week to see and treat others as Christ does? Consider the following suggestions:
- Evaluate. People often treat others as objects rather than as God’s image bearers. If you’ve drifted into this tendency, be intentional about confessing your sin and changing your actions.
- Restore. Broken relationships are a great hindrance in the local church. Seek reconciliation and/or forgiveness from someone with whom you’ve become disconnected.
- Fight back. There are a number of institutions that systematically strip away the dignity and worth of thousands of human beings—human trafficking, pornography, racism, and more. Take a stand to fight against one of these practices in a tangible way.
Our culture has a way of creating illusions about certain types of people: They don’t matter. They’re not important. They’re expendable. Don’t believe these lies. Instead, look at all types of people the way Christ does, and treat them accordingly.
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Teacher's Notes:
When has your perception of someone change for the better?
- When they did a good deed, when I saw them with their family, when he/she wrote a letter of apology, I read something they posted on Facebook, I saw a “where they are now” posting, years after I had known them, when I found out things about the person I didn’t know, he/she brought me cookies/flowers/…, when they were the speaker at a church (business, social gathering ...) I attended – they did better than I ever expected, when they won the tournament.
The Point: When we see others as Christ sees them, we will treat them accordingly.
Think about how we learn lessons in life. Typically, we learn by:
- listening to what we should do,
- watching someone do it, and
- then actually doing it ourselves.
We learn by good examples. But we can learn from bad examples too. David is one of those historical biblical figures that we look at and can learn great qualities.
Through David, we learn how to:
- trust God in difficult circumstances.
- courageously fight battles in His strength.
- pray with an earnest heart.
- forge friendships and how to respect authority.
Certainly, these are the good examples in life we learn from David.
But if you ask almost anyone who has a little church background about David, they will tell you two things: David killed Goliath and David slept with Bathsheba.
Today our lesson focuses on the bad example of David and what we should learn from it.
Turn to 2 Samuel 11:1-4
I. The Temptation to Use Others 2 Samuel 11:1-4
1 In the spring when kings march out to war, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah, but David remained in Jerusalem. 2 One evening David got up from his bed and strolled around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing — a very beautiful woman. 3 So David sent someone to inquire about her, and he said, “Isn’t this Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam and wife of Uriah the Hittite?” 4 David sent messengers to get her, and when she came to him, he slept with her. Now she had just been purifying herself from her uncleanness. Afterward, she returned home.
What can we learn about the private life of David in these verses?
- Sin comes in all sizes and shapes. Some sins are blatantly obvious, others hide in the shadows where we think no one else can see. We tend to categorize some sins as worse than others, but they all share two things in common: all sin is rebellion against God, and all sin begins in the heart.
- David is a prime example that sin begins in the heart. That may seem ironic, since Scripture refers to David as a man after God’s own heart (see 1 Sam. 13:14; Acts 13:22). Yet he was still a man with a sinful nature—one that was on display throughout his encounters with Bathsheba, her husband, and the many people who witnessed the actions of a man who was supposed to represent God’s righteousness as their king.
Three key stages of David’s downward spiral into sin.
- David looked at Bathsheba. It’s easy to see things we shouldn’t, especially in today’s culture. The problem is that David didn’t just glance at Bathsheba and then avert his eyes. He looked, and he kept looking.
- David asked about Bathsheba. David gazed long enough for this to turn to lust. She became nothing more than an object for his enjoyment.
- David sent for Bathsheba. Having reduced Bathsheba to an object in his mind, David used his power as king to grab what he desired.
This passage usually centers on the sin of adultery, which is understandable. Sex outside a marriage relationship was explicitly prohibited in the law (see Ex. 20:14), and David certainly knew that.
But there is a sin behind the sin. Behind David’s willingness to commit adultery was an equally grievous sin: What was it?
- Failing to see Bathsheba’s worth as a person created by God in His own image.
- Imago Dei: “Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness” … So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Genesis 1:26a-27, NIV
- David failed to see Bathsheba as God saw her—and that failure opened the door to a greater sin by using her for his own selfish desire.
- I allowed a neighbor to borrow a riding lawnmower. He was in a bind and to be honest, his yard looked horrible. I reluctantly agreed and off he went. After finishing his yard, he parked the mower in my driveway. Everything looked fine until the next time I went out to mow my grass. One of the blades was cutting directly into the lawn. I remember the anger that swelled up in my heart over that situation. I thought, “How can you take something that is mine and not care about it?” Imagine how the heart of God breaks when we mistreat the people that He created – the very people that He sent His Son to save. When we undervalue people, we don’t treat them the way Jesus would. Each person you come into contact with is a creation of God’s. (Imago Dei – image of God) When you view others with the eyes of Jesus, your treatment of them will change.
Why is it often difficult to see the worth in others?
- The apostle Paul connected our treatment of others to our walk with Christ. He said God’s will is “that each of you knows how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not with lustful passions. … This means one must not transgress against and take advantage of a brother or sister in this manner” (1 Thess. 4:4-6, emphasis added).
- The way we treat others is supposed to be based on the way God has treated us. Therefore, when we walk with Christ, we see people from His perspective—and we treat them accordingly.
Where do we see people objectified or undervalued today?
- Human trafficking which goes on, drug cartels sell what is poison, just to acquire vast wealth, some employers treat their workers badly, some politicians treat their constituents as fools, just to perpetuate their own power and influence, sports figures are sometimes treated as resources to be used up, and some classes or groups of a population are often minimalized (women, homeless people, racial groups, elderly …).
What are some ways we might try to use others for our own benefit?
- Get them to do your work, only choose friends who make us look good, make friends with someone we think will help us climb a ladder of success, demand total control in a relationship to make me feel important, demand “submission” from others (which is not really submission), use others to calm my own insecurities – “they deserve to be taken advantage of”, bully someone else to make me feel powerful, display arrogance towards others because I am insecure, myself.
Common thought: my sin doesn’t affect anyone but me.
- David’s sin affected David, Bathsheba, Eliam, Uriah, the men he sent to get her.
Points: See others as people of worth in the sight of the Lord. Even people with faith in God and devoted to serving Him can fall victim to moral failure. The personal character of a leader is critical. Weak character will express itself in ill-advised actions that have the potential to affect others negatively. People of authority are to exercise their authority in ways that benefit others, not harm them. People of authority are not to see others as objects to be used to satisfy their own whims, desires, or needs. Sin has its consequences, if not at the moment, then later.
II. The Misuse of Authority 2 Samuel 11:5-9. 14-17
5 The woman conceived and sent word to inform David: “I am pregnant.” 6 David sent orders to Joab: “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” So Joab sent Uriah to David. 7 When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab and the troops were doing and how the war was going. 8 Then he said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet.” So Uriah left the palace, and a gift from the king followed him. 9 But Uriah slept at the door of the palace with all his master’s servants; he did not go down to his house … .
14 The next morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. 15 In the letter he wrote: Put Uriah at the front of the fiercest fighting, then withdraw from him so that he is struck down and dies. 16 When Joab was besieging the city, he put Uriah in the place where he knew the best enemy soldiers were. 17 Then the men of the city came out and attacked Joab, and some of the men from David’s soldiers fell in battle; Uriah the Hittite also died.
What can these passages teach us about the progression of sin in how we deal with other people?
- Temptation presents itself – “I could use that person to ___”
- We entertain the temptation – “How could I con them into it?”
- We partake of it a little bit - the little bit causes a desire for more – now we are definitely sinning, then the sin is rationalized – “He/she had it coming … deserved to be taken advantage of”, then we try to cover up the sin - causes more sins.
- It’s hard to see David here as the same man who would not lay a hand on Saul, even when Saul sought to kill him. David presents a tragic example of what sin does when we don’t confess it, but instead allow it to spread. Let’s go back to the beginning and see where it all started: David was self-focused. He failed to see people—neither Bathsheba nor Uriah—as God sees them, and he used both of them for his own ends. His self-focused actions led to self-preservation at all costs.
How can we anticipate these kinds of temptations and stop ourselves from sinning in these situations?
- Know that you are not immune, don't put yourself in situations where you know you could be tempted, flee temptations – run the other way (sometimes literally), and continually ask for, receive God's help.
What are some warning signs that show we’re viewing people as objects or obstacles?
- We care little for their feelings, we disregard their needs, their wellbeing, we treat them nice only so we will please ourselves, we act selfishly.
How did David misuse his authority?
- David sought to cover up his actions—which led to more sin. David didn’t value Bathsheba and had used her for his own ends; now, David didn’t value her husband, Uriah. Tried to use him to cover up his infidelity. The king planned for Uriah to go home and sleep with his wife while he was in Jerusalem, leading everyone to assume Uriah was responsible for Bathsheba’s pregnancy.
What is the lesson here for leaders in authority?
- Look out for the needs and interest of others. Leaders have a responsibility to look out for the needs and interests of those whom they lead. How sad when people of authority manipulate situations and other people and use their power for selfish purposes. People of integrity, even when given the opportunity to do otherwise, act with humility, demonstrate concern for others, and look to serve faithfully. One evil step leads to another, if left unguarded and unconfessed. Paul wrote: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:3-5).
Close: This lesson is not so much a lesson on sexual infidelity and immorality as on personal integrity, valuing others, and looking out for the needs and interest of others.
- David treated Bathsheba as an object to satisfy his desires. Then by refusing to own up to his sin and in an effort to cover himself, he manipulated others without any concern for what was best for them.
We may be faced with other kinds of opportunities at home, work, church, or in other settings to use others and manipulate situations to meet our desires, to promote ourselves, or achieve some selfish purpose.
- However, every person has been created in the image of God and is to be treated as such. Rather than plan how they may serve us, we are to determine how we might serve them. That certainly was the model of Jesus (Mark 10:44-45). He did not allow His own privileges to dominate His actions, “but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant … humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death.” (Phil. 2:7-8)
Application
Evaluate.
- The tendency of our fallen human nature is to treat people as objects rather than as God’s image bearers.
- When we do this toward a whole group of people, we see prejudice and racism.
- Confess to God if there is a group toward which you do not treat with the same respect or worth that God desires.
Serve.
- Is there a person in your life you have treated more as an object for your happiness or called a friend as long as he or she can help you?
- Change your attitude and find a way to serve the person instead of seeing him or her as someone to serve you.
Hope to see you on Sunday!
In His Love,
David & Susan
