 cover up his sin.
Sin always has consequences, and in this case they were all too obvious: Bathsheba was pregnant. David was desperate to cover up his guilt, so he puts cover-up plan A into action [verses 7-11].
Plan A is summoning Uriah back from the front line, and telling him to go and sleep with his wife Bathsheba. The phrase Go down to your house and wash your feetref is a Bible euphemism for sure! Uriah knew what he meant. The point is, if David can raise the possibility that Uriah made Bathsheba pregnant then no questions will be asked.
Unfortunately for plan A, Uriah turns out to be the only person with integrity in the whole story. He refuses to go home and sleeps at the palace gate instead. He explains,!ref We are supposed to get the contrast between his and David's actions. David stays at home while Israel is at war; Uriah refuses to go home while Israel is at war.
So David puts cover-up plan B into action [verses 12-13]. This time he will get Uriah drunk. Surely he will lose his high moral standards after a few drinks. But no, unlike David, Uriah's standards remain intact and he once again refuses to go home.
Finally, David resorts to plan C: downright murder [verses 14-25]. He sends Uriah back to the battle and orders Joab to do the dirty deed. Uriah is to be hung out to dry. He is to be abandoned in the fiercest fighting to be killed.
And plan C worked. Uriah was killed. And we see that the cover-up was worse than the original sin itself. Sin was added to sin, murder to adultery.
As far as David was concerned, the cover-up was complete. But he had forgotten one thing, the same thing he's forgotten all chapter: God. And, in the last verse we hear God's devastating verdict. Literally: David has done evil in the sight of the Lord.
In the next chapter we find out the consequences. But in this chapter, what we've seen is how a good man came to do terrible evil. It started simply enough, but he soon found himself being carried inevitably from one level of sin to the next. He could have chosen to step out of the elevator of sin at any time, but he chose not to. It all happened so easily, so naturally, so inevitably. One sin just led to the next: and that's why we need to be alert all the time. As soon as we find ourselves in the elevator of sin we need to get out before it goes any further.
What can we learn from all of this about how to avoid sin in our own lives? Well, simply we can see what David did here and do the opposite.
Now, I'm going to be talking primarily about sexual sin and adultery in what follows, because that is the issue David faced here in 2 Samuel 11. But please don't switch off if you think it's not an issue you face. For whatever reason, adultery may not be your main temptation, but there will be some other temptation for sure. Maybe gambling, or drinking too much, or self-harm, or nursing a grudge against someone, or pornography, or theft, or lying, or pride and vanity in our hearts. Whatever temptations we face, we have things to learn from David's failure here.
So, I've got six quick things beginning with "F". Some are things to do, some are things not to do. Don't get them mixed up or we're all in trouble.
First, fight! Keep busy with the Lord's work. The Christian life is not a game but a war. It is when we are most comfortable that we are most vulnerable to sin. We need to be fighting on God's front line; and we need to be fighting sin in our lives.
David was doing neither of these things. And, like David, I am an easy target for temptation when I am away from the battle. For me, it is when I travel that I often neglect my Bible and my prayers. I step back from the from the front line. And that makes me more vulnerable to temptation.
And we are more vulnerable to temptation when we are idle. Casually surfing the Internet; lazily flipping channels on late-night television; just hanging around waiting for things to happen — as for David, these are times of extreme danger for us. Be on your guard for idle moments, and use them instead for the Lord's work. Keep up the fight.
Second, flee. The Apostle Paul warns us to Flee from sexual immorality.ref Some temptations are so strong, we're told simply to flee them. Get out of their presence!
How do we flee temptation? In short, don't fantasise, don't flirt, and don't fold. That is: don't follow David; don't act on temptation.
Don't fantasise. Nurturing sexual fantasies about someone is not fleeing from sexual immorality. Obviously David was doing this when he sent to find out who Bathsheba was, and one thing led inevitably to another.
My colleagues think it very strange that I try not to join them constantly ogling girls. "You can look, but don't touch" is one of their justifications. But looking is not fleeing. Looking just fuels fantasy, and that just takes us down a level on the elevator to sin.
Don't flirt. Again, flirting seems harmless, but it's yet another level on our descent. We need to be ruthless about this. I was away in Japan last week, far from home, and one of my colleagues there was a very nice young lady who seemed to enjoy my company (or perhaps I flatter myself!). What harm could come of a little flirting? Well, perhaps a great deal once sin has got its claws into me.
By the grace of God I happened to be working on a sermon on resisting temptation (this one!), so I knew what to do: flee! I had to make a deliberate point of not becoming close. I had to make sure we didn't have the opportunity to talk alone together. To be very professional and remain on formal terms. Perhaps she felt I was unfriendly — I felt I was being unfriendly —, but, frankly, it is better than the alternatives. Some would say that this zero-tolerance approach to flirting is overzealous, but I know how easily one thing leads to another in the heart of a sinner.
Don't fantasise, don't flirt, and don't fold.
David just gave in: he folded. He knew what he was doing was wrong, but he carried on anyway. He should never have let it get this far. Fantasy leads to flirting leads to folding.
Adultery doesn't happen by accident: it starts with a look, a word, a touch and suddenly you are on the way to sin and it's harder and harder to get out. Better never to start. But if you do start, get out before you go too far: don't fantasise, don't flirt, and you won't fold.
The final advice I want us to learn from David's failure is, face up to your sin.
David compounded adultery with murder as he tried to cover up his sin. We may not end up murderers ourselves, but trying to hide our sin always makes things worse. There's nothing we can hide from God in any case.
So be in the habit of confessing your sin to God. Confess early and confess often. Always keep short accounts with God. If your sin needs putting right with others, then God will help you do it. Always face up to your sin.
So, six "F"s we can learn from David's failure, whatever our temptation is. Fight: keep busy with the Lord's work. Flee, which means, don't fantasise, don't flirt and don't fold. And face up to your sin: confess early and confess often.
A good man ended up doing terrible evil because he failed to do these things. He ended up riding the elevator of sin down to the bottom: he could have got out at any point; he shouldn't have got in in the first place.
If great King David could end up sinning like this, then we are fools if we think we are immune.
I just want to finish with two quick points.
First, in this sermon what I've given you is a recipe, a set of instructions, which is OK up to a point. But what we really need is not recipes but relationship.
The heart of sin is a failure to please God. David has forgotten in his heart that he loves God and that God loves him. He had forgotten that his reason for living is to please God and be pleased by him. That's why verse 27 is so devastating, the thing David had done displeased the Lord.ref
If you don't know God's love in your heart then no recipe or formula will help you. You will never be able to please him. If you are not confident that God loves you or that you love God, please don't try to follow a set of rules to avoid sin. It's never going to work. You can never, ever please God just by following some rules.
The second and final thing to say is, what happens if you have gone all the way, and ended up in serious sin?
How can sinners know God? How can we come back to him, whatever we've done? How can bad people be put right with an angry God?
Well, Psalm 51 is David's response when his sin