“David summoned him, ate and drank with him, and got him drunk. But in the evening he went out and lay on his bed with his lord’s servants and did not go down to his house.“-2 Samuel 11:13
I wanna revisit a concept I first taught way back when we were in the Book of Genesis.
Back then, I taught that within every human being, there is a YETSER HARAH and a YETSER TOV…
Or an “évil inclination” and a “good inclination.”
This is different than what Christianity teaches.
Christianity says that until one is born again, man only has an evil inclination.
They’ll say that sin was first introduced into the human race when Eve was tempted and she bit into the forbidden fruit.
However, the question they conveniently overlook is how Eve could sin in the first place by eating from the tree BEFORE eating from the tree.
So it’s a contradiction to say sin was introduced into our DNA when she ate from the tree…
Otherwise, she wouldn’t have had the ability to sin in the first place by eating the forbidden fruit.
Ya get what I’m saying here?
Anyway, before I go too far off on a tangent with this…
What I wanna say is right now David is an evil person…
And Uriyah is a good person.
Another way to put things is to say David has let his evil inclination take over to the point where he not only slept with Uriah’s wife, but he is now doing everything in his power to cover up his sin.
When Uriah refused to go home to his wife, David held this huge banquet to get Uriah drunk in the hopes that afterward, he would go home to his wife.
To David’s frustration, his plans failed.
We’re told that Uriah “went out and lay on his bed with his lord’s servants and did not go down to his house.“
In contrast, we see that Uriyah was so guided by his good inclination that he foiled David’s attempts to get him to play into his evil plans.
The rabbis of old say that Uriyah was catching on to David’s deception at this point.
Although he didn’t know why, he sensed there was some devious reason why David so desperately wanted him to go home to his wife.
Of course, we all know the reason.
Bathsheba was only about 4 or 5 weeks pregnant with David’s baby.
If Uriyah went home and slept with her, everyone would think the baby was his, since he came home unexpectedly.
That way, David could hide what he did…
And Bathsheba would be off the hook as well.
The irony of this story is so thick you could cut it with the dullest of butter knives.
The goodness of Uriyah is exposing the evil of David the way that light exposes evil for what it is.
As a result, David’s frustration is mounting.
He will soon turn to even more desperate measures…
All guided by the evil inclination he has let get hog wild outta control.
The takeaway is this:
As I first taught when we were way back in the Book of Genesis.
We each have an evil inclination and a good inclination embedded into our DNA.
Every day of our lives, we will be tempted by the evil one and the lusts of the world to live according to the desires of our evil inclination.
If left unbridled our evil desires will get out of control and lead us down dark paths that end up in disaster.
That’s why, via the prompting of the Holy Spirit, it’s our duty to walk according to the good inclination.
I leave you with this advice God gave Cain before he murdered his brother Abel in cold blood.
“If you do well,
will you not be accepted?
And if you do not do well,
sin is crouching at the door.
Its desire is contrary to you,
but you must rule over it.”
-Genesis 4:7
CONNECTING THIS TEACHING TO THE NEW TESTAMENT
“I say then:
Walk in the Spirit,
and you shall not fulfill
the lust of the flesh.
For the flesh lusts against the Spirit,
and the Spirit against the flesh;
and these are contrary
to one another,
so that you do not do
the things that you wish.”
-Galatians 5:16-18
With no additional information are we to conclude that David had never lusted after a woman prior to this?
Well, of course not.
But this was the one case where David’s lust remained uncontrolled and transformed into sinful behavior.
Not sure what your point is here.