Giving In

 DEVOTION

2^ND SAMUEL

GIVING IN

2 Sam 11:1-5

11:1 In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem. 2 One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, 3 and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" 4 Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (She had purified herself from her uncleanness.) Then she went back home. 5 The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, "I am pregnant."

NIV

This is not the best time in the life of David, who was a man after God’s own heart, but David was still just a man and fell to the weakness of men. However, there is a difference in that David was the king and had the power to do as he pleased, and the temptation did not have to remain just a temptation, for he was able to fulfill his desire for Bathsheba. David should have been out with Joab and the fighting men of Israel, but for whatever reason, the king stayed home, and that was the beginning of an awful event. Was Bathsheba complicit in bathing on her roof in view of the king’s palace? We are not told, but it was still David's problem, for he was the one who sent for her so that he might be with her. The story will unfold further and become a deeper problem for David, which we know results in the murder of Uriah, but the story is about temptations. We all are subject to one form or another of temptation, and as men or women, because we are in this corruptible flesh, not that we should make excuses for our flesh, we will yield from time to time to some temptation. How do we justify our yielding to our flesh? We all have yielded to many different kinds of wrongdoing, or should we just say, sin. The fact is, there is no level of sin, as some might think. Jesus did not make any distinction between disobedience. We are told as far as the law was concerned, if a man was guilty of one law, he was guilty of the whole law. When Jesus said that he fulfilled the law, but that the two greatest commands are to love the Lord with our whole being, and to love others as ourselves, that carried a whole meaning apart from the law. However, God did not leave us alone, for he knew we needed a Savior, and because of Jesus, we will not have to be dead in our sin, but have life. Yet, that is no excuse to continue to sin, yet we do. Can we not help ourselves? Can we not live upright without yielding to a temptation? It is sad, but it seems to be true that no matter how we try, we are not going to be sinless, yet at the same time, God has declared us innocent because of Jesus. David was not innocent, and in the reality of our lives, we are not innocent, yet we are in the truth of God. Thank you, Lord, for you have set us free. David had to pay a price for his actions in the present, and we might have to pay for our actions in the present, but Jesus paid the price for ours for eternity. But how can we still fail? We just cannot attain perfection. Why are we still giving in?