Posting may be erratic for the next three weeks.  And then, I will move out of this house, all of my junk will be in the new house and I can take all winter if I want--to unpack it.

Lesson yesterday was about Nathan informing David about a man who had one sheep, and another man who was rich and had dozens and dozens of sheep, who took the poor man's sheep to roast for a guest.  David was infuriated.  "He deserves to die.  Make him repay the poor man four to one in sheep."

And then the prophet Nathan spoke one of the most poignant sentences in the Bible to David.  He said, "You are the man." David had pronounced death for himself.

It is so easy to see sin in another person's life and not in our own.  David saw the rich man's sin, but not his own sin.  David had seen Bathsheba bathing, sent his servants to get her, and had sex with her.  She got pregnant while her husband was in the field in battle and hadn't been home.  And David, to cover his sin, told his general Joab to tell Uriah to come home for a few days.  Uriah slept at the door of David's palace and didn't go home.  Refusing to take a privilege that his troops didn't have.   It would have looked like Uriah had fathered the child if David's plan had worked.  It didn't.

So David, his plan foiled, told Joab to send Uriah to the front of the fighting, then pull back his support so that Uriah would be killed. And that's what happened.

David stole Uriah's wife, had sex with her, then murdered her husband.  David had many, many wives.  He didn't need to steal Uriah's only possession.  (i.e., the sheep parallel.)  David had the power to do anything he wanted to as king--even if it was wrong.  It was terribly wrong.  Theft of another man's wife, Adultery, and Murder.  Each sin to cover up the last one.

Joseph Stalin said (not a perfect quote) that the death of one man is a tragedy.  The death of a million is a statistic.  And Stalin, as well as the Nazis, killed millions and thought they got away with it.

David killed many men in war.  But the death of Uriah was murder.  He didn't get away with it.