Continued Coverup: 2 Samuel 11:26-27
It is always easiest to deal with sin before it enters our life and brings mayhem with it. Sin is messy. People get caught up in our sin and deal with our consequences thrust into their life. Events happen we didn’t intend or even consider in the moment. Life as God planned it heads off course. Our sin takes the perfection God intended and manipulates it into something completely unintended.
Uriah dies because David wanted an intimate moment with his wife. Bathsheba may have played her part in the adultery, but she is innocent of her husband’s death. David wanted a moment of pleasure, but that moment of pleasure introduced a baby. To cover his tracks, David used the military action to kill Uriah. An evening of illicit pleasure ultimately ends in the death of an honorable warrior. Uriah’s own trusted people have him killed as he believes he is protecting his people. In fact, it isn’t just Uriah who dies, but all the valiant soldiers who took up arms with Uriah died that moment.
Bathsheba mourns the loss of her husband. Regardless of how much she played a part in the evening she and David came together, I cannot believe she intended for her husband to die. Who would have thought a single evening of pleasure would ultimately result in her husband’s death and the death of other warriors? How many widows and orphans were made as a result of a single night of adultery?
Once the period for mourning is over, David brings Bathsheba into the palace to be a part of his harem. For people paying attention, the sin would now be even more difficult to hide. At first, it might have seemed caring for David to introduce a woman whose husband died in war into his harem. In the harem, she would find care and nourishment. In the harem, she would want for very little.
When her pregnancy showed and her baby was born full term but not ninth months after joining the harem, suspicion would naturally rise through the ranks. The other women in the harem would know, and the servants who served them would talk. David’s sin and Bathsheba’s compliance couldn’t hide forever.
That’s the danger of sin. Left unchecked, it grows and festers until we work to control it. Sin reminds me of the movie The Gremlins. In the movie, cute little creatures are left unchecked. Before too long, these little creatures cause mayhem and great effort is needed to bring the situation under control. It would have been far easier – leading to a much more boring story – to take care in the beginning and avoid doing something that shouldn’t be done. Our life with sin is the same way. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It is always easiest to deal with sin before it enters our life and brings mayhem with it.
