We now see in the last part of this dark chapter in David's life the end result of compounded sin. In David's sinful, sick and twisted thinking, he orders his 4-star general Joab to send Uriah to the front lines. David further tells Joab to place Uriah in the most dangerous and vulnerable of positions and then abandon him so that he would be killed. As far as we know, Uriah never offended the king or broke any law. In fact, he was completely loyal to David and his fellow soldiers. This was nothing less than a cold-blooded first degree conspiracy to commit murder. And David was the orchestrator of it all - the same little sheperd boy who had faithfully slayed Goliath, the same young man who wrote and sang praises to God to try and calm Saul's evil spirit, the same man who had remembered his covenant with Jonathan and showed Christ-like kindness and mercy to Mephibosheth. His heart was so hard that when Joab sends word back that Uriah is dead and he explains why other men had to be unreasonably placed in harms way for this plot to work, David responds, "Don't let this upset you, the sword devours one as well as another." Are you kidding me? David shows no remorse even for the others who were caught in the crossfire of David's evil plan! In the same manner that an agressive cancer can quickly take a perfectly healthy person to the brink of death, so too can sin quickly infest the same heart that was once a mirror of God's!
I wish I had some happy spin to this part of David's story. No joke or clever quip comes to mind to make us laugh. But sin is no laughing matter. The destruction it brings is very real. David, Bathsheba, Joab, and Uriah are not just biblical characters we hear about in church. They were very real human beings. And the sin that so easily beset David, can rear its ugly head in our lives. Whether it be laziness, complacency, pride, arrogance, adultery, lust, deception, manipulation, or even murder, we are all susceptible to sin. And none of us are immune from it's concequences. David was God's anointed, the ancestor of Christ, a man after God's own heart. Yet, the coming chapters will clearly demonstrate to all believers that we are not immune from sin's deadly consequences just because we are saved. While our souls are eternally secure, sin can and will destroy our lives if we allow it to fester in our hearts.**
A dance with sin will only leave blood on your hands.
**(The last few statements implies that I believe David was saved during this dark time in his life - Hebrews 11 mentions David's faith, amojng others, which was accounted to them as righteousness. But that more deep theological discussion is reserved for another day)
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