Chapter 12: Reflection

Guest post by Dave Allen, a "The Story" reader! 

“In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war…” (p.161). 

There is a lesson to be gleaned from this line: had David been occupying himself within God’s purpose, fulfilling his kingly duties, he would not have been wandering about on the palace roof in Jerusalem and would never have seen Bathsheba bathing in the first place!

“Adultery.” Many believers these days do not like to think about it, but God commands the same sentence for adultery as he does for murder. 

I oft wonder why when so many of my fellow believers cheer and chant surrounding a murderer’s execution but I have never heard any of them calling for an adulterer to be put to death. Do they believe God’s Law has changed simply because adultery is accepted by secular society? Or perhaps it is because this sin hit a little too close to home for them?

At any rate, David’s adultery led to the murder of Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband. We in the church do not like to talk about it, so we down play it as “David’s Sin” or even try to romanticize it as “The Story of David and Bathsheba,” but in all actuality it was a crime. 

David, the beloved King of Israel; the apple of God’s eye, was a criminal. He committed pre-meditated capital murder in his attempted cover-up of adultery. He had committed two capital crimes, each calling for the death penalty, and thought he had gotten away with them, until the prophet Nathan showed up at his door:

This is what the Lord says: “Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity on you….You did this in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel” (pg. 163).

Justice called for David’s death, but filled with remorse, David asked God to forgive him, and “God said yes” (pg. 165). It is my sincerest prayer that we, the Church, having been forgiven by God of our own sins, will strive to remember the mercy and grace God has shown upon us, before we determine to cast an unforgiving judgment upon others. 

As Charles Williams has said of the Lord’s Prayer, “No word in English carries a possibility of terror than that little word “as” in that one clause” – “as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

A CLOSING THOUGHT

Should criminals still be executed if they, like David, have asked for and received God’s forgiveness?