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July 10, 2014
The more comfortable we find ourselves, the more vulnerable we are. Reflecting on the need for pastoral purity, Alistair Begg calls us to vigilance concerning matters of integrity. King David, for instance, was a man after God’s own heart, yet also the center of a sordid, sinful tale. We must not think the same cannot happen to us—and so we need people like David’s friend Nathan who can call us to repent. Our ultimate hope, however, is for a new heart. God provides the essential moral transformation both leaders and laity need.
1hiIn the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged jRabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.
2It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on kthe roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. 3And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this lBathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of mUriah the Hittite?” 4So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (nNow she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned to her house. 5And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”
6So David sent word to Joab, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent Uriah to David. 7When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab was doing and how the people were doing and how the war was going. 8Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and owash your feet.” And Uriah went out of the king's house, and there followed him a present from the king. 9But 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. 10When they told David, “Uriah did not go down to his house,” David said to Uriah, “Have you not come from a journey? Why did you not go down to your house?” 11Uriah said to David, p“The ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths, and my lord Joab and qthe servants of my lord are camping in the open field. Shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife? As you live, and ras your soul lives, I will not do this thing.” 12Then David said to Uriah, “Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back.” So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. 13And David invited him, and he ate in his presence and drank, sso that he made him drunk. And in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with qthe servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house.
14In the morning David twrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. 15In the letter he wrote, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, uthat he may be struck down, and die.”
Copyright © 2024, Alistair Begg. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.
