Advent Week 4 // Uriah's Wife (Bathsheba)

Read: Matthew 1:1-6; 2 Samuel 11:1-17, 26-27; Psalm 51:1-2 The Savior of the world was the son of an adulterous murderer? That doesn’t make any sense to me. Yet, so it was.

If you’re unfamiliar with the story, the brief version is this. King David (who should be off with the army) is gazing out over his dominion and sees a beautiful woman bathing. He discovers that she is the wife of Uriah (who’s away fighting for him) but sends for her anyway and sleeps with her. After he returns her to her home, she discovers she is pregnant. David brings Uriah home and tries to manipulate him to sleep with her, but he won’t indulge in luxuries while the men are away fighting. So David sends him to the front lines, where he intends Uriah to be killed. And he is. David marries Bathsheba, and they have a son. As a punishment for his sin, Nathan prophesies against him, and David’s first son through Bathsheba dies. David repents of his sin, and God allows them to conceive another son, Solomon, who is destined to be the wisest ruler of all time, and build the temple of the Lord—and through this line comes the Christ.

The story itself is a testament to the graciousness and mercy of God, and the way He can bring good out of (even willful) evil. But there’s more to it than that. This is David. This is the David. The David who (as barely a young man) slayed Goliath. The David who wrote beautiful music and poetry to the Lord. The David who Scripture describes as a “man after God’s own heart.” Before he sinned against the God of creation, it’s fair to say that he had been following faithfully after Him better than most of us can ever hope to.

It seems at first a peculiar mixed message, this young man who is held up as an example for recklessly pursuing the Lord and then chastised for recklessly abandoning Him. But upon further reflection, perhaps it is not so peculiar.

Both of these seasons of David’s life point to the same truths. Both of them point to why Jesus had to come.

No one is so good they deserve to be in God’s family. (Not even the best of us.)

No one is so broken they can’t be in God’s family. (Not even the worst of us.)

David—who was a man after God’s own heart—was still as susceptible to sin as the rest of us, and much evil came to him and to Bathsheba as a result of his disobedience. But God restores.

Bathsheba—drawn into a drama she did not initiate, widowed, her dead child in her arms—could not have anticipated that the Savior of the world would come through her and the adulterer and murderer she married. But God restores.

Perhaps one of the messages God hoped for us to learn through this messy history is this: The Savior of the world had to come through a line of pitiful, sinful people. Because if there were any other kind of people, He wouldn’t have had to come at all.

Kailey Newkirk is Summit's reGROUP Director.