Collateral Damage - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him and what came to my heart and mind in 2 Samuel 11:23-24,

"The men overpowered us and came out against us in the open, but we drove them back to the entrance of the city gate. Then the archers shot arrows at your servants from the wall, and some of the king's men died. Moreover, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead."

This is the report brought back to David from the front where David engineered the murder of Uriah the Hittite.

"Some of the king's men died." These "some" were David's men. Men who were fighting David's fight, men who were taking orders that were directly from David. Innocent men who died needlessly in a vain attempt to provide cover for David's adultery and impregnation of Bathsheba, Uriah's wife. We often fail to recall that David not only murdered Uriah, but the deaths of all these men, including Uriah, were murders - not casualties of war. All these men, honorable and obedient, died needless deaths in David's attempt to hide his sin.

What began as a furtive glance of sexual impropriety by a man that already had a number of wives, turned into an episode of lying, deceitful dishonesty, and the murder of a number of good, loyal men, including Uriah, as well as the adultery David engaged in with Bathsheba.

Sin has a way of slipping beyond our control, beyond our ability to keep it compartmentalized, beyond our ability to keep it contained. David was a great man of faith, a hero among those whose lives point the way to great faith, a man after God's own heart, and look at how his indulging in his lust for Bathsheba cost so much.

David, of course, as a man of God, was not beyond God's ability to know and confront David, which he did through the prophet Nathan.

So... I ask myself, if it was beyond David's ability to contain his sin, if it was beyond his ability to hide it from God, if it was beyond his ability to keep the whole of it under wraps, if it was beyond his ability to keep it from morphing into an episode that horrified even himself by what he had done... how about me? Do I ever think the sin in my life is something I can manage, I can control?

These innocent and loyal men who died were not the only collateral damage, damage turned its ugly face toward the principal in the episode: the one who allowed his time of temptation to get the best of him.

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

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Trevor Fisk

trevor.fisk@gmail.com