2 Samuel 11

Those that have grown up in the church are probably very familiar with this passage. There are a few things that really stuck out to me as I was reading this. The first has to deal with temptation. In verse 2, it talks about how David walked around the roof the palace and spotted a beautiful woman. Based upon his reaction in later verses, it was clear that King David lusted at first sight. Instead of leaving the roof top, not only did he continue to look at her but he sent servants to find out about the woman. Rather than running desperately from sin, he walked into the hands of it. Many times, we do the same thing. We see how close we can get to sinning without actually sinning and it usually bites us in the butt. Our response should be the opposite of what King David did. When the temptation arises, flee from it. If I know that I might have the temptation to get pissed off while playing basketball, it'd be better to not play basketball than to walk into the temptation and possibly even sin.

The second thing that I found interesting is how David tries to recover after he sins. At any point, He could have turned to God in repentance. I'm sure there would have been implications of being found guilty as an adulterer but the God honoring thing would have been to come clean about the whole thing. Instead, King David goes through endless amounts of work trying to cover up the fact that he slept with someone elses wife and got her pregnant. Covering up sin is not an easy thing, so don't do it. God offers repentance for those who ask.