Today I want to camp on 2 Samuel 11:5-15. Please read that on your own since it’s too long to quote.

The plot continues to thicken in David’s situation. Notice that when Bathsheba sends word to David that she is pregnant (clearly by him because her husband has been with the army all this time), he moves swiftly to try to cover his tracks.

Uriah’s character through this story is a fascinating contrast to David. Uriah comes to David and fills him in on the battle, as David requested. However, when David sends him home, he doesn’t go! David is obviously frustrated as Uriah is interfering with his plan to make it appear that Bathsheba’s baby was a result of this mid-battle visit. Notice Uriah’s response in verse 11:

Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents, and my master Joab and my lord’s men are camped in the open fields. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and lie with my wife? As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing!”

Oh, that had to sting! Not only is his plan backfiring, but Uriah is much more righteous than David all around in this situation. His concern is with the safety of David’s army and the ark of the covenant, so he will not selfishly go home and enjoy his house and his wife. [Remember back to part one of this study - David, as king, should have been more concerned about those things in the first place! Not only did he neglect that responsibility, but then enjoyed the company of someone else's wife in their absence!]

We can be brief with the rest of the story – David tries a second time; he gets Uriah drunk thinking that he would then go home, but Uriah still stays with the palace servants. David is now desperate and sends Uriah back to the field with a sealed letter commanding his own “accidental” death.

Isn’t it amazing how predictable we are as sinful humans? When we’re caught in sin, we instantly look for our escape. It started back in the garden with Adam and Eve’s blame shifting, and it continues today when I catch my three year old desperately trying to distract her little brother so he doesn’t cry after she pushes him onto the floor!

In part two, we looked at the subtlety of sin and the safeguards we need to put into our lives and hearts to help keep us from falling. This idea of shifting blame, covering our tracks, and looking for a way out is critical – I think this is such an ingrained pattern in our sinful human nature that we often deceive ourselves. We can so skillfully shift the blame that we convince even our own minds that we are innocent.

Notice what James 1:22-25 says about self-deception:

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.

According to James, we can easily deceive ourselves even while listening to the Word!! If we are familiar with the Word of God and are exposed to its Truth but fail to put it into practice, it can quickly become a spiritual blind spot. At our house, my husband and I tend to put shoes and other odds-and-ends that need to go upstairs on the bottom steps. Sometimes I have to gingerly pick my way through the piles, and yet don’t do anything about it! It is a habit of neglect. I’m used to the piles, and it doesn’t occur to me that the fact that I’m having to step around them is supposed to be a signal to do something about it!

The two years I taught high school Bible at a Christian school were some of the most draining and challenging I have ever had. It was stunning to me to see the spiritual hardness in many of these kids. I shed many a tear at my desk (and in front of a couple of my classes!) pleading for God to soften their hearts. For two years I watched kids walk in and out of the door of my classroom who had heard Biblical Truth their whole lives. The vast majority of them were involved in youth group and had spent most, if not all, of their school years in private Christian school. They thought they had heard it all, and it was such a habit for them to gingerly step around the “piles” in their spiritual walk that it didn’t occur to them that everything in their lives was a disaster because they had failed to obey.

What a scary thought this is to me! It is so easy to deceive ourselves, even as we are surrounded by Truth. How many of us are going to church each week, maybe even reading some Scripture passages or devotionals here or there, listening to some Christian music on the radio, and never realizing that our lives are completely out of whack spiritually? We’re skillful blame shifters, or we’re just completely consumed with avoiding consequences! (Have you ever been praying in your car and then get distracted by fear of the police officer along the side of the road and hope that he doesn’t notice you were speeding? It doesn’t occur to us that it was a inherent contradiction to pray to the Lord and disobey authority at the same time – we just don’t want to get a ticket! Ok, I’ll stop stepping on toes.)

James tells us to look intently into the Word, and then do what it says. The more practiced we become at hearing the Truth and failing to obey, the more hardened we become.

I am concluding today’s post with the same Scripture I used at the end of part two. It is a passage I pray frequently – only God can reveal to us the depth of our own self-deception and sinfulness.

Who can discern his errors?
Forgive my hidden faults.
Keep your servant also from willful sins;
may they not rule over me.
Then will I be blameless,
innocent of great transgression.
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be pleasing in your sight,
O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.
Psalm 19:12-14