Listening to God and Staying Out of Trouble
[1] In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.
[2] It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. [3] And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” [4] So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned to her house. [5] And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”
2 Samuel 11:1–5 ESV Read More
Isn’t it a bummer how we are, when we send other people to do the righteous thing while we stay home and do the unrighteous thing? Here’s what I mean: It’s so easy to recognize a good thing, and then hope that someone else will do it. That’s why people are armchair quarterbacks. To expand that activity, we can now be armchair marriage counselors, armchair entrepreneurs, armchair Army Generals, and armchair pastors.
The commentary on this whole section happens in the first sentence. It is basically commenting that David shouldn’t have been staying home, he should have been leading his armies in battle. From then on you know that whatever happens will be awry. To make things worse, this whole spy-on-the-bather thing happens in the middle of the afternoon! So many things setup from the start to cause harm.
It is very very rare, that when the Lord gives us an opportunity to do what is right, that we regret doing it. More often than not we regret NOT doing the thing we knew we should have done. If that’s the case, then how should we treat the Lord’s provocations against our comfort and security? When we hear the Lord call us, we should jump at the opportunity. David would’t have had to struggle to resist temptation if he was struggling to survive against the Ammonites!
Discerning one of the most spiritually significant events for my whole family happened like this between me and my wife.
“We should __________” I said.
“Do it, Sully!” she said, “The more we talk about it, the more we’ll talk ourselves out of it!”
When we see someone in need, we have a chance to make them our neighbor like the Good Samaritan did. When we feel the Lord urging us to lay off the snooze button and wake up and pray, He is waking us up like He woke up Samuel. When we are supposed to be doing our job and we do it, we don’t get distracted and fall like David did.
To hear and know the voice of the Lord takes time and patience, but the Lord wants us to be able to do it more than we do! It’s a softening of our hearts and a yielding of our wills that fully shows off that God is in the business of salvation.
Hebrews 3:15 “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”
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