David's Downfall
David’s Downfall
2 Samuel 11:1-5
David led a rollercoaster of a life. We don’t really get the feel of all those ups and downs because we just hear an occasional snippet. This week, I read David’s story as if I were reading a book. This morning, I want to take you on that wild ride with me.
Two weeks ago, we met David for the first time. King Saul, who could have had anything and anyone he wanted, took the one thing he couldn’t have: the spoils from a battle. They were to be burned, not only to honor God but to make the war about something other than greed. When Saul gave into greed, the clock started ticking toward the end of Saul’s reign. In preparation for that day, God and Samuel go to Bethlehem to meet Jesse and choose one of his sons to anoint to be the next king.
As we pointed out earlier, this whole selection process just epitomizes the way God works in the Bible. Bethlehem is a middle of nowhere, podunk town. Jesse isn’t rich or powerful. Jesse has nearly enough sons to field a football team. However, Samuel watches the parade of son’s pass by, from oldest to youngest and God just keeps saying, “Nope!” In the least likely of places, from the most obscure family, God chooses “the runt,” the son who has to be called in from the fields because he’s tending the sheep, kind of the lowliest job around. At the heart of the story, is the message that, when it comes to choosing people, God doesn’t look at what everyone else looks at: status; wealth; power; good looks; charm. Rather, God looks into that person’s heart. Samuel anoints David to be the next king.
Here’s the thing, though…an awful lot happens before David ever assumes that throne. Scripture tells us that almost the moment that David is anointed, the Spirit of God leaves Saul. Instead, Saul is seized by bouts of depression. If you sit with the story, you just kind of know that somewhere deep inside of Saul, there is a rumbling going on that says, “Things are going to change!” A couple of the servants in Saul’s court decide that what Saul needs is a little music to soothe his soul. They pitch this to Saul and he agrees and asks if they know a good musician. One of them has just the guy…David, Jesse’s son, who plays the harp.
In a really delicious scene, David, the anointed one, is brought to soothe Saul, the one whom he would replace. David plays just the right music. He finds just the right note. Saul is so grateful that he treats David like his own son. And we know, as we hear this story that there are two things that won’t last: the soothing relief of David’s music isn’t going to heal Saul’s broken soul; and that look of love in Saul’s eyes when he gazes on David is going to give way to cold-hearted hate.
The unlikely thing that began to fracture Saul and David’s relationship was the young David’s greatest success. With the Philistine army lined up across from Saul’s army and no one going anywhere fast, an enormous Philistine soldier began to challenge the Israelites. He shouted that he would battle any one of their soldiers, winner take all. The problem was that no one would fight him. The only reason that David was there that day at all was because he was delivering food to his older brothers. He was the one, though—the runt—who accepted the challenge.
Without belaboring the point, this established David, from the start, as incredibly brave. After all, he did what no one else would do. At the same time, we catch a glimpse of him being pretty darn savvy, too. If you’re going to fight someone bigger and stronger, you better be able to move fast. So, David refuses to wear the bulky armor he’s given. If you’re going to fight someone bigger and stronger, you’d better try to throw him off his game. David taunts Goliath and gets him all riled up. If you’re going to fight someone bigger and stronger, you’d better have an unconventional attack plan. David has a sling and five stones which allows him to attack without ever being in the same zip code as Goliath.
David’s heart is definitely in the right place. He is most certainly brave. However, he’s also opportunistic and clever and deadly accurate with a sling. I don’t think David was surprised for one minute when Goliath fell. I don’t think there was a person on either side, though, until that moment, who thought David had a ghost of a chance. “Goliaths” are slow and cumbersome. They’re too heavily armed. They can’t adjust. To a “Goliath” though, guys like David just don’t fight fair.
So, this is David’s big day…unless you’re looking at what it meant to Saul. Here’s this kid he loved, this harmless kid who could play a mean harp and tend sheep. Now, that same kid is becoming a hero. In fact, the public’s love for David only grows stronger. David leads more and more people into battle and they win, constantly. Every time, David consults God. And at the end of every battle, David “crosses all the t’s and dots all the i’s.” David is a warrior. A saying begins to circulate that when it comes to battle, “Saul kills hundreds but David kills thousands.” You can imagine how Saul adored that chant.
At the same time, David and Saul’s son, Jonathan, become…at the very least…best friends. It’s not today’s sermon but I will just say that if you actually read the story, these two men make a lot of “commitments” to each other and spend a fair amount of time kissing each other. If Jonathan and David aren’t partners in love they are two men who deeply love each other. (Trust me…I’m fine either way, here!) My point for today is simply this: it would be one thing for Saul to resent David as someone “out there” in the world whom people adored more than him; it is quite another thing to have his own son adoring David, 24/7.
Understand, David is not a conniving manipulator. He genuinely seems to make his decisions by constantly asking what the next right and faithful is to do. He prays before he acts. When dealing with people, he’s not taking advantage of anyone. After killing Goliath, Saul offered David his oldest daughter’s hand in marriage—a sure step to advancing his power and his family’s status. David refuses. Who does that? Later, he married one of Saul’s other daughters but it was because she wanted to marry him. Again, who, in that ancient world, cares what a woman wants? It’s not that he makes the same choices we would make. He marries at least seven other women. He kills a lot of people in battle. Still, David is a person of conscience who cares about doing the right thing.
This was right about the time when Saul decided to kill David. Two different times, Saul literally threw a spear at David and just missed. David, after checking in with Jonathan, fled. For years, Saul had his troops hunting David with any number of narrowly missed encounters, all seemingly avoided because, again, David was listening to God…and to Jonathan’s inside information that was being funneled to him. On two different occasions, David actually had opportunities to kill Saul and he refused…because it would be wrong to kill someone anointed by God. Instead, he cut a piece of Saul’s robe and showed it to him later and said, “I could have killed you but I didn’t. Why are you trying to kill me?” Still, Saul pursued him. David just kept doing what he needed to do to stay alive.
Ultimately, for his own safety, David fled to foreign lands. He even ended up fighting alongside the Philistines until the Philistines were preparing to fight Saul’s troops and the Philistines decided that David couldn’t be trusted to fight his own people. This is probably just as well, though, because it was in that battle that not only Saul but David’s beloved friend, Jonathan, died.
You would think this was when David, long anointed, finally assumed the throne, right? It wasn’t! Saul had arranged for his son, Ish-Bosheth, to assume the throne. He lasted two years and was at least as bad as his father. Then, finally, David is the king, the people’s king, the most beloved king the people would ever have.
Here’s the problem, though. David had always been an outsider who surprisingly rose to the occasion and exceeded expectations. Who would have expected a shepherd from nowhere to be anointed? Who would have expected that shepherd to be the one who could play music that would soothe a king? Who would have expected that shepherd to slay Goliath? Who would have expected that scrawny little kid to win battle after battle against the most powerful armies in the world? I think until the day that he was king, David, himself, would have looked back on his life and said, “God was the difference maker every step of the way. I asked for God’s help and God guided me. This wasn’t about me. This was about God.”
I imagine it’s really hard to be a king and be humble. I think this has been the gift for me of lots of years of mowing grass and changing light bulbs and locking and unlocking doors around here in this “kingdom.” Doing the grunt work that needs to get done is what keeps us all grounded in life. You don’t have to be declared the king to lose touch that way. You just have to have enough people around you telling you that there are better uses for your time. You just have to get comfortable enough with people “serving” you that you start spending your time thinking about what you deserve. It turns out that some people who are fantastic at staying on course when life is hard, struggle wildly when life gets easier. Sometimes, success can be dangerous.
Trust me…David did some great things! He reunited Israel and Judah. He moved the Ark of the Covenant into a prominent place. He gave the people a lot of the credibility as a nation that they were looking for in the world. He wrote some fine poems and sang some great songs and was a fair and honest judge. However, just as the clock was ticking at end of Saul’s reign, from the moment David assumed the throne, the clock was ticking again when his own ego and entitlement lead him to stop praying and listening for God’s answer and searching for the next right thing to do.
One evening, that clock ran out. David got out of bed after a terrific nap. (Somehow, I don’t remember a lot of stories about David and his naps during the “lean” years.) He walks across the room and looks out the window. As a king you tend to have a room with a view, a perspective that leaves you both “above it all” and “looking down on everyone” all at the same time. This time, though, his eye wasn’t drawn to the breadth of his kingdom but to the curves on the woman who was bathing on the roof next door.
In an instant, David forgot everything he had ever learned. He didn’t pause for prayer. He didn’t ask himself, “What’s the right thing to do?” He just said to himself, “Oh my God…” with absolutely no prayerful intentions, whatsoever. His “people” did the dirty work and found out who she was, including the fact that she was someone else’s wife. Then, he arranged to meet her.
It wasn’t long after that that David’s world changed with a single sentence: “I’m pregnant…” Having done the right thing for so long, David is about to teach us how to make a really bad situation a whole lot worse…