Will You Examine Your Heart?

Scripture — 2 Samuel 11:26-12:1 (NRSV)

When the wife of Uriah heard that her husband was dead, she made lamentation for him. When the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife, and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD, and the LORD sent Nathan to David.

Devotion

When we do things in life that are terribly wrong, we have a choice. We can go on with life as if nothing bad had happened, living in denial and rationalization. Or we can acknowledge what we have done, not only confessing our sin but also examining our hearts to discover what motivated us to do something so wrong. Leaders of integrity will choose the latter course, even though it can be painful and humbling. Lesser leaders will avoid the unseemly truth, though sometimes God acts with grace so that the truth cannot be denied. God’s mercy can compel us to do the inner work required if we are to grow into wholeness and holiness and become wise leaders.

This is exactly what happened to King David in 2 Samuel 11-12. David, as you may recall, was chosen by God to be the King of Israel. According to the prophet Samuel, God selected David because he was “a man after [God’s] own heart” (1 Sam 13:14). High praise, indeed!

But David did not always live up to God’s standards or reflect God’s heart. We encounter an egregious example of David’s failures in 2 Samuel 11. During a time when Israel’s army was doing battle against the Ammonites, David, who was safe at home, spied a “very beautiful” woman as she was taking a bath (11:2). Though he discovered that this woman, Bathsheba, was married to one of his soldiers, a man named Uriah, nevertheless David ordered the woman to come to him so he could take advantage of her sexually. Several weeks later she let David know that she was pregnant with his child.

Now if that was the end of the story, it would be bad enough. David used his royal authority to coerce a woman to be sexually intimate with him. He did so knowing that this woman was married to another man. This is, indeed, a horrific example of sexual harassment, assault, and adultery. But David added to the offense by attempting to shower Bathsheba’s husband Uriah with various pleasures. Uriah, who had been fighting in David’s army and who was a man of exceptional integrity, refused David’s temptations. So David sent Uriah back to battle with instructions that he be placed at the very front of the battle lines. As David had hoped, Uriah was killed in battle. Bathsheba grieved for her husband for a season, after which David took her as his wife.

The multiple horrors of this story are shocking. It’s hard to imagine any decent human being doing as David did, not to mention someone who was once “a man after God’s own heart.” Yet, not only did David act in a dreadfully evil way, but it appears that he intended to move on without dealing with what he had done and what had gone so wrong in his formerly God-honoring heart. David had no plans to do the inner work that might enable him to grow as a leader and, indeed, as a human being.

But God wasn’t going to let David get away scot-free. Because “the thing David had done displeased the LORD . . . the LORD sent [the prophet] Nathan to David.” Nathan told David a story about a rich man who used his power to devastate a poor man economically and emotionally. When David heard this, he was angry and declared that such a man deserved to die. Nathan responded with these familiar, fateful words, “You are the man!” Or as it says in the King James Version, “Thou art the man” (2 Sam 12:7). Nathan goes on to confront David concerning his treatment of Bathsheba and Uriah. Finally, David is able to say, “I have sinned against the LORD” (2 Sam 12:13).

2 Samuel continues the story by focusing on David’s pleading with God to preserve the life of the child he had fathered by way of Bathsheba. We do not at this point see much evidence of David doing the inner work he should have been doing, not only by repenting but also by examining his own heart. However, we are given a powerful glimpse of this inner work in Psalm 51. The superscription (title) of this psalm reads, “To the leader. A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.” This inspired prayer models for us a particular kind of inner work, the inner work that follows from moral failure.

In the next few Life for Leaders devotions I’ll be examining Psalm 51, discovering what we can learn about inner work from this stirring prayer. You may want to read ahead and begin reflecting on Psalm 51 now. Or you can wait for tomorrow to begin. At any rate, let me encourage you to reflect on the following questions.

Banner image by Pro Church Media on Unsplash.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project’s online commentary. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: David’s Rape of Bathsheba and Murder of Uriah (2 Samuel 11-12).

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