David and Bathsheba: The Story That Should Sound an Alarm in Every One of Us

Part Seven of a series on the life of David — The Woodlands First Baptist Church

None of us really like alarms. The sound is designed to irritate. Nobody wants to wake up to one in the middle of the night, and certainly nobody enjoys seeing a siren appear in the rearview mirror. We do not even like the cost of installing alarms, especially when we are not sure we will ever need them. In truth, however, alarms are beautiful, because they save lives and spare us enormous grief.

Texas was reminded of that in a horrible way just over a year ago. On July 4, 2025, in the Hill Country, rain began to fall in the middle of the night while families slept and children were in bed at summer camps along the Guadalupe River. The river rose with almost unimaginable speed; near Hunt, it climbed more than twenty feet in two hours. The National Weather Service issued flash-flood warnings during the night, but most people were asleep, cell service was weak in places, and the children at the camps did not have phones. Kerr County did not have a comprehensive system of outdoor flood-warning sirens, and by the time many people realized what was happening, it was too late. More than a hundred people lost their lives, including 27 campers and counselors at Camp Mystic. After the flood, nobody talked about how annoying alarms can be, only about how crucial they are. When the water is rising, the sound of an alarm is beautiful.

Continuing the series on the life of David at The Woodlands First Baptist Church in The Woodlands, TX, Dr. Bruce Webb arrived at 2 Samuel 11, the story of David and Bathsheba. This story, he told the congregation, is an alarm.

The King Who Stayed Home

Through the previous chapters, David has been the unquestioned leader of his army, highly engaged, leading by example. Consequently, the opening verse of 2 Samuel 11 lands with a noticeable contrast: “In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.”

It would be too much to say David sinned by staying home; no king could realistically lead every battle. Nevertheless, the text seems to suggest it was unusual, and in hindsight, he would have been far better off leading the battle than remaining behind. Verse 2 continues: “One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing.”

What the Text Actually Says About Bathsheba

Before going further, Dr. Webb paused to correct a misreading he has heard more than once. If you want a passage of Scripture about a woman intentionally trying to seduce a man into sin, you can find one; Proverbs 7 is an example. You will not find it here unless you are trying far too hard. The focus of this text is on David and his actions. The text says David got up. Bathsheba was bathing, but the only way anyone could have seen her was from the roof of the tallest building in the city, walking around at night, looking down into other people’s residences, which is exactly where David was. Some retellings suggest Bathsheba was bathing on the roof and therefore shares the blame; the text never says Bathsheba was on the roof. David was. Scripture gives no indication that Bathsheba did anything wrong. The Bible simply says she was very beautiful, and being beautiful is not sinful.

David then sent someone to find out about her, and he learned she was the wife of a soldier named Uriah, a Hittite whose people had lived in the land before Israel ever occupied it. By this point in history, Uriah was faithful to Israel’s God; his very name means “Yahweh is my light.” Knowing all of it, David sent for her anyway. Many translations say David took her.

She Had No Real Choice

It was not as though Bathsheba had a choice. When the king tells his men to bring a woman to him, she comes, because the king held absolute power. The Book of Esther shows what happened when even a queen refused. King Xerxes told Queen Vashti to come display herself before a banquet of drunken men; Vashti said no, which seems entirely reasonable, and she immediately lost everything, was never heard from again, and was cast as the villain of the story. That is what happened when a queen said no. Bathsheba had no power at all, and the story will soon show what happened to her husband when he failed to do what the king wanted. People who say she should have simply refused do not understand the power differential or the culture of the time. Notably, when word later came that her husband was dead, Scripture records that she mourned for him, one more reason to believe none of this was her will.

Alarms Blaring: How One Sin Leads to Another

There is a backdrop to David’s behavior. Second Samuel 5:13 records that when David came to Jerusalem, he took more concubines and wives, building a harem. You would think that the more he accumulated, the more satisfied he would be; the opposite was true. He had to have more, and now he wanted Bathsheba, though she was married. Lust makes us perpetually dissatisfied with what we have, which is one of the reasons pornography is so destructive: it does not satisfy, especially the deepest need beyond sex, which is relationship and intimacy. All of this unfolded against God’s explicit command in Deuteronomy 17 that Israel’s king must not take many wives. Reading the story, Dr. Webb said, the alarms are blaring.

Then the text says David slept with her, and one sin began leading to another. David had believed two lies the evil one constantly tells about sin: first, that it is okay to ignore God because no one will find out, and second, that no one will be hurt. The devil is a liar on both counts. Verse 5 detonates the cover story before it begins: “The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, ‘I am pregnant.’” Uriah had been away at war, fighting for David of all people, so there was no possibility he was the father. Numbers 32:23 warns, “you may be sure that your sin will find you out,” and although the context differs, the principle rings true here. As the old saying goes, sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.

It is worth asking why a story like this is in the Bible at all. If any of us were God, would we have included it? God certainly cannot be accused of a cover-up. The story is here because it happened, and the Bible tells the truth, all of it. It is also here so we can learn on someone else’s dime. We do not have to step in every pothole to learn a lesson; we can read God’s Word, pay attention, and be spared.

The Cover-Up and the Death of Uriah

David summoned Uriah home from the front, made small talk about the war, and told him to go down to his house, hoping a night with his wife would obscure the timeline. Uriah refused, sleeping instead at the palace entrance with the servants. His explanation in verse 11 is devastating in its integrity: “The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents, and my commander Joab and my lord’s men are camped in the open country. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and make love to my wife? As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing!” David kept him another day and got him drunk; even drunk, Uriah would not go home. This was the caliber of the man: 2 Samuel 23 lists Uriah among David’s thirty-seven mighty men, his elite and most loyal soldiers.

What David did next is so disturbing that, if we did not already know the story, we would never imagine it. He wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by Uriah’s own hand: “Put Uriah out in front where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die.” Joab complied, placing Uriah where the strongest defenders were, and Uriah the Hittite died, along with other soldiers of David’s army. When the report came back, David’s response to the messenger was chillingly casual: “Don’t let this upset you; the sword devours one as well as another.”

Is this the same David we have studied for six weeks? It does not seem like it. Dr. Webb has stood on the ancient tel in Amman, Jordan, the site of ancient Rabbah, and looked out at the place where Uriah was killed by the Ammonites because David intentionally sacrificed him, all to cover up adultery. After Bathsheba’s time of mourning ended, David brought her to his house, she became his wife, and she bore him a son. It seemed he had gotten away with it. Then comes the final phrase of the chapter: “But the thing David had done displeased the Lord.”

You Are the Man

In 2 Samuel 12, the Lord sent Nathan the prophet to David, and Nathan told him a story as though seeking advice. There were two men, one rich and one poor. The rich man owned a very large number of sheep and cattle. The poor man had only one little ewe lamb, which he raised like a daughter; it drank from his cup and slept in his arms, the way a family pet becomes one of the children. One day a traveler came to the rich man, and rather than take one of his own animals to prepare a meal, the rich man took the poor man’s one little lamb, killed it, and served it to his guest.

Before Nathan could even ask his opinion, David’s anger exploded: “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die! He must pay for that lamb four times over.” And Nathan said to David: “You are the man!”

Dr. Webb takes no pleasure in reporting what followed. David and his family suffered enormously, and he paid for this sin the rest of his life. The newborn son died. David lost the respect of his family and his people, and the ultimate result was calamity for him, his household, and the nation. So what should we learn from this alarming text? Dr. Webb acknowledged the congregation was probably enjoying the study about as much as he enjoyed preparing it; nevertheless, at The Woodlands First, the commitment is to teach all of God’s Word, not just the favorite parts. The hope is that studying this story might keep some of us from wrecking our lives and the lives of others. Three lessons follow.

Lesson One: Never Live as Though You Are Immune to Sin

Remember that David was chosen as king because God saw his heart. Remember that he defeated Goliath through outstanding faith. A good start does not guarantee a good finish. David’s faith was sincere and real when he was young and facing adversity; something changed when he became king. Pride, power, and the absence of accountability combined into a lethal mix, and then David put himself in the wrong position. The failure that followed was predictable, and if we carry the same attitudes into the same positions, ours will be too. Paul warned in 1 Corinthians 10:12: “So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!”

Don’t Go in the Garage

Too many of us live like the lead character in a horror movie. You know how it goes. A murderer has escaped, the phone rings with heavy breathing on the line, and the babysitter hears a sound in the dark garage. What does she do? She goes into the garage. Or there is a noise in the basement, the last person who went down never came back up, and the character descends the stairs holding a candle that promptly goes out, while the whole audience yells at the screen: leave the house! Dr. Webb suspects the angels in heaven sometimes watch us the same way, screaming: No! Don’t spend that much time with someone who is not your husband or wife! Don’t get on that website! Don’t go to that place!

Practical Boundaries That Protect a Marriage

The specific danger in this text is adultery, and the pattern is absolutely predictable: whenever someone other than our spouse begins meeting our emotional needs, emotional infidelity comes first and often leads to physical infidelity. Consequently, husbands and wives should sit down together and discuss real boundaries. Dr. Webb shared his own. Outside of work, he and his wife Nancy do not spend time alone with a person of the opposite sex who is not family; you will not find either of them at dinner or a movie alone with someone of the opposite sex. It is not because they view people as temptations, which would be strange. It is because almost all infidelity begins with a simple friendship that gradually becomes someone meeting emotional needs a spouse should be meeting. Dr. Webb also keeps a personal commitment before God: he will not treat someone he works with in any way that would make him uncomfortable if a man treated Nancy the same way. Furthermore, he and Nancy have no secret social media accounts, and their phones, computers, and passwords are fully available to each other. Accountability to God, to your spouse, to friends, and to yourself is how vulnerability is answered.

Lesson Two: Fix Your Faith on Jesus, Not on People

There is a great deal of talk these days about deconstructing one’s faith. Here is something genuinely worth deconstructing: any faith that has been constructed on people rather than on God. People will inevitably let us down, because there are no perfect people. David’s actions in this story are disillusioning, and Dr. Webb admits it freely; they disillusion him about people. However, they do not negatively affect his relationship with Jesus, because his commitment to God was never based on David. It is based solely on Jesus. Until that is true for you, disappointment and disillusionment are always ahead.

Lesson Three: If You Have Already Failed, Take Your Medicine, but Don’t Quit

When adultery enters a marriage, roughly half the time the marriage does not survive, and an enormous amount of pain is unavoidable. Nobody wants those odds. However, notice the other side of the number: half of those marriages do make it. It usually takes about two years of hard work and forgiveness for a husband and wife to reach the other side of adultery, but with God’s help, it can be done. There is hope for the wounded partner as well. There are people in the congregation, Dr. Webb noted, who have experienced infidelity, turned to God for help, done the hard work, and today have a great marriage. That can be your story too. If you need help with your marriage, The Woodlands First will help you get counseling, confidentially; you only need to ask.

Above all, hear this: God’s grace is bigger than any sin, even this one. As terrible as the story of David and Bathsheba is, after the loss of their first child, and amidst all the suffering, God gave David and Bathsheba another son named Solomon, who grew up to build the temple and reign during the pinnacle of Israel’s size and strength. If you have failed, and honestly, who among us has not failed in some way at some point, and you believe you are beyond God’s forgiveness, it is simply not true.

If You Are in a Hole, Stop Digging

The story of David and Bathsheba is an alarm, and alarms are a grace. They wake us before the water rises past the point of escape. So hear this one. Guard your vulnerability. Build your accountability. Fix your faith on Jesus rather than people. And if you are in a hole, stop digging; turn to God and call out to him, because his grace is bigger than your sin.

For everyone, in any situation, at any time in life, who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

If you are searching for a church near me in The Woodlands, TX where all of God’s Word is taught with honesty and grace, we would love for you to join us at The Woodlands First Baptist Church as the series on the life of David continues.

Learn More about The Woodlands First

► Watch the full sermon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsDrnG-_lpc

► Plan your visit this Sunday: https://thewoodlandsfirst.org/new/

► Learn about our church: https://thewoodlandsfirst.org/beliefs/

► First Kids (Children’s Ministry): https://thewoodlandsfirst.org/ministries/first-kids/

Visit The Woodlands First Baptist Church

We offer worship services in traditional, modern, and Spanish-language styles across two campuses in The Woodlands, TX, along with Bible study classes and small groups for all ages.

South Campus: 11801 Grogan’s Mill Rd, The Woodlands, TX 77380

North Campus: 5148 FM 1488, The Woodlands, TX 77354

Phone: (281) 367-4317

Website: thewoodlandsfirst.org

Looking for churches near me in The Woodlands, TX? The Woodlands First Baptist Church has served this community since 1979. Come discover a community that takes Scripture seriously and welcomes everyone who is searching.