Bathsheba – Moment to Moment (Bible blog)

Loved by the Lord

She gave birth to a son and named him Solomon. The Lord loved him, and he sent a message through the prophet Nathan, who named him Jedidiah (meaning, “beloved of the Lord”), because of the Lord (2 Samuel 12:24–25).

David had seriously messed up. By his sin, he had treated the Lord with contempt. And the consequences of his sin would affect he and his family for a long time.

And yet.

With David’s repentance came forgiveness. David would write later,

As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. (Psalm 103:12)

Honestly, if I had been God, I probably would have thought, “Well, I’ll forgive David and Bathsheba. But there’s no way I’m blessing this marriage.”

But God didn’t think that way.

In naming Solomon “beloved of the Lord,” I think God was passing a message on to David and Bathsheba.

“I still love you. And though there will be hard times ahead of you because of your sin, whenever you look at this child, remember that I have not taken my love away from you. Solomon is my beloved child. And so are you.”

And ultimately, it was through David, Bathsheba, and Solomon that Jesus came. (Matthew 1:6-16)

That’s grace. That’s God’s faithful love.

What regrets do you have? Are you still struggling because of the consequences of your past sin?

Know that like David, Bathsheba, and Solomon, you are beloved of God.

And in Jesus, there is forgiveness and a way forward. So let’s take that next step together with him.

What God thinks

However, the Lord considered what David had done to be evil. (2 Samuel 11:27)

Sometimes I think the Bible, especially the Old Testament history books (Joshua-Chronicles) would be so much easier to read if we saw more words like the above.

So many times, we see questionable or downright wrong decisions made by the “good” Biblical characters and no comment is made on what God thought.

Even though we might see the negative consequences of their actions, there’s no actual direct rebuke from God.

So we think, “If God disapproved, why didn’t he say something?”

I don’t know about you, but that’s how I feel a lot of times.

But I think the thing to remember is that the writers of these books are assuming we already know what God thought about these people’s actions.

We know because we read the ten commandments and God’s other laws.

We know because we’ve seen before how God felt and responded to similar sins.

And so often times, the Biblical authors don’t go out of their way to specifically say, “By the way, what this person did was wrong.”

In this case, however, the author does go out of his way to say that the Lord considered David’s actions wrong.

Why? I don’t know.

But I do think it’s a warning to us. Like David, we can fool ourselves into thinking that what we’re doing is okay, even when God says it’s clearly wrong.

That especially can happen when we don’t immediately see any negative consequences or “sense” any rebuke from God.

But it doesn’t change the fact that what we’re doing is evil in God’s eyes. He sees. And sooner or later, he will hold us accountable.

It might be on this earth. It might be before his judgment seat in heaven. But he will hold us accountable.

So let us not fool ourselves. Let us instead, maintain soft hearts toward God, not letting our consciences get seared by ignoring God’s word.