2 Sam 11:6, Then David sent to Joab, saying, "Send me Uriah the Hittite." So Joab sent Uriah to David. 
	In this morning’s reading, we have before us the terrible sin of King David. It is a most awful chapter to read, knowing the heart of God toward this man whom the Lord placed on the throne of Israel. As well, we know a bit about the heart of this king whose entire life was lived in honor before God. There is the essence of the shepherd, who cared for the flocks of his father, and then for the flock of the Lord, His people.
	Over and over, again and again, we see the concerted walk of David with God and Jehovah with David. The history of that relationship, before this chapter, was the detailed honoring of God and the Lord’s honoring of this shepherd. The many early and numbered Psalms that David wrote and sang to the Lord are filled with the joy in the Lord as the Rock of Salvation, the Fortress, the Protector and the Glorious One, Who Alone is worthy of all praise and adoration. 
	We see that young boy, fresh from the pasture who stood before the giant and proclaimed unto all the assembled men of war on both sides, the truth of 1 Sam 17:45-47. 1 Sam 17:45-47, Then David said to the Philistine, "You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have taunted. This day the Lord will deliver you up into my hands, and I will strike you down and remove your head from you. And I will give the dead bodies of the army of the Philistines this day to the birds of the sky and the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord does not deliver by sword or by spear; for the battle is the Lord's and He will give you into our hands." 
	Then we have all those times when David was running away from the malignant anger and jealousy of King Saul in his every effort to maintain hold on the legacy of the kingship of Israel. This was despite the fact that Jehovah had removed it from his lineage. 
Continually, the Lord protected David from the rage and fury of this vicious sovereign, who relentlessly kept up the dogged pursuit. Time and again, when he could have killed Saul, David restrained his hand from that action. Thus the Lord put him on the throne through no revolution, through no assassination, through no violent intent of David’s hand against the house of Saul. 
	All of this faithfulness of David comes crashing down upon his legacy with the actions of this morning’s reading. Not only are we told of the walk of the king on the ramparts of his home, and his lustful leering at the bathing woman, but we read of the adultery and the plotting that leads to this action of David to cover up his sin. That then leads to doing to Uriah what he would not do to Saul, plotting his deliberate death in order to make it seem that he was just being neighborly with the widow of Uriah. All of this intrigue and deception was at the cost of not only Uriah, but the baby. Even more harrowing was the breaking asunder of that living relationship with God that had been David’s heritage and foundational walk from the earliest days of his history. 
	This sad and virulent display of selfish lusting after the things that we see in our lives as the result of sin, leads to disobedience and deliberate turning away from the holiness and the righteousness of God. This is traced back to that very first murder as recorded in the Bible. God manifestly urged Cain not to give into the jealous rage which was seen in Cain’s visage, but Cain did not obey. He rather took the stand that he was justified in his actions as he killed his brother in the field. 
	Listen to what could have been, if Cain had but honored God and turned away from that which was welling up within his being in Gen 4:6+7. Gen 4:6+7, Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? "If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it." 
	Just as with Cain, David had that choice as he was on his roof top. He could have abstained from following through with the vile course of the actions that would haunt him the rest of his days. His heart was after the Lord, but he gave into the lusts of his eyes. He thus proceeded down that path which led to the death of Uriah and the death of the baby, so ill conceived. 
	Another who gave into that lust of the eyes and being, which caused the loss of many lives in the army of Israel in the failed attack against Ai was Achan. This is recorded in Josh 7:20+21. 
This was one of the initial battles in the course of the conquest of the Promised Land. Because of the sin of Achan, the whole movement forward into the land came to a halt until the sin was dealt with. This sinful lusting after that which the Lord had expressly prohibited kept the entire nation from moving on until the Lord was honored by the removal of the sinful heart and the items so expressly forbidden, yet lustfully coveted. 
Josh 7:20+21, So Achan answered Joshua and said, "Truly, I have sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel, and this is what I did: when I saw among the spoil a beautiful mantle from Shinar and two hundred shekels of silver and a bar of gold fifty shekels in weight, then I coveted them and took them; and behold, they are concealed in the earth inside my tent with the silver underneath it." 
On another plain, not too distant from the reading of this morning, we have the account of King Saul at the point wherein he did not follow through with the command of God to utterly destroy the Amalekites. God wanted nothing to remain of that people which had shamelessly attacked the poor and the weak, the stragglers of the nation of Israel as they were being led in the wilderness. Saul was to be the instrument by which the righteousness of God would deal with these wicked tribesmen who had caused the cry of Ze’akah to proceed to the ears of God from that group who were struggling to keep up with the rest of His people. 
Saul, rather than following the expressed command of God, saw that which was finest of the spoil and considered it a waste to destroy it all. There was no compunction in his heart to utterly decimate that which did not hold the twinkle in his eyes. However, that which was the best of the rest, Saul allowed to remain alive and brought it back as we read in 1 Sam 15:20-26.
	1 Sam 15:20-26, Then Saul said to Samuel, "I did obey the voice of the Lord, and went on the mission on which the Lord sent me, and have brought back Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. But the people took some of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the choicest of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God at Gilgal." And Samuel said, "Has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices As in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams. "For rebellion is as the sin of divination, And insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He has also rejected you from being king." Then Saul said to Samuel, "I have sinned; I have indeed transgressed the command of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people and listened to their voice. Now therefore, please pardon my sin and return with me, that I may worship the Lord." But Samuel said to Saul, "I will not return with you; for you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel." 
	Inherent in this disobedience is the effect of that sinful attitude and demeanor. Saul first tried to argue that he did what the Lord commanded, except for what the people demanded. He put the blame on the others in the army. Then he tried to reason his way out, stating that he was bringing all these good animals to be sacrificed to the Lord. He made it sound like it was a conscious effort on his part to bring honor to God even though he had not obeyed Jehovah in the first place. Then he stated that he was in fear of his life because the people would be angered if he told them to destroy that which was to have been utterly annihilated. 
	It is the example of all the excuses and reasoning that we put forth as to why we do not simply obey the Lord in the course of our walk on this earth. We come up with all types of pretexts and justifications for the disobedience that we harbor in our hearts, with none of it being acceptable before the Holiness of God. 
 In the Book of Job, we have the result of this deliberate disobedience against God detailed in Chapter 20, verses 12-14. There is no rationale that will dissipate what takes place within us as we are so sinful in our relationship with God. Even our physical beings will suffer the dregs of our disobedience to the pit of our stomachs. 
Job 20:12-14, "Though evil is sweet in his mouth, And he hides it under his tongue, Though he desires it and will not let it go, But holds it in his mouth, Yet his food in his stomach is changed To the venom of cobras within him. 
	This is the physical and emotional and mental reality of our being separated from our living, loving, sustaining relationship with God because we are choosing to try to hold onto those things which we know are displeasing to The Lord. We waste away in the absolutely poisonous and devastating reality that our whole essence is twisting and turning and churning in the bile of our evil lusts and deeds. 
There is no peace within or without as we fight that constant battle of denial and justification for those things which have no basis of truth or defense. We are wrong, but we bitterly and vehemently try to rationalize and mollify why it could be alright if only God would see it our way instead of with His perfect and Holy Omniscience. That is until we finally confess our sin before the Lord and seek His forgiveness and His cleansing work from within.
	As we are told in Prov 28:13+14, this is the course in which we will find ourselves before the throne of God’s grace and mercy and compassion. As we confess our sins and ask God to help us forsake them completely, He will respond with a complete release of that burden of care and worry that has bent us over in frustration and ill ease and bitter condemnation of heart and mind.
	Prov 28:13+14, He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, But he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion. How blessed is the man who fears always, But he who hardens his heart will fall into calamity. 
	The other detailing of what is so common among a people so beset by their old human nature is the idea that we will put on the appearances of righteousness, all the while trying to hide the evil desires of our hearts and minds. We will, outwardly, say the right things and will do the acts that would indicate that we are honoring the Lord. However, as indicated by the Prophet Isaiah, in Isa 29:13-15, that will not serve to fool the Lord. He sees exactly the heart that comes before Him in humbleness and in contriteness as opposed to the one who would try to get away with that which utterly displeases the Lord God Almighty.
	Isa 29:13-15, Then the Lord said, "Because this people draw near with their words And honor Me with their lip service, But they remove their hearts far from Me, And their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote, Therefore behold, I will once again deal marvelously with this people, wondrously marvelous; And the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, And the discernment of their discerning men shall be concealed." Woe to those who deeply hide their plans from the Lord, And whose deeds are done in a dark place, And they say, "Who sees us?" or "Who knows us?" 
	How many of us are truly caught up in this terrible situation? We know that God sees everything we do. We know that He is intensely and intimately aware of our every thought and motivation, and still we think that what we do will somehow escape His knowledge. 
We come to church on Sunday mornings with praise and worship exuding from our mouths. We partake of communion and we read the scripture and we pay our tithes, all in the proper conduct of what is expected of us from fellow saints, family members, and even the principles and guidance that we have learned in the Bible. 
	Yet, in the depth of our beings, we find ourselves involved in those sins which we feel are truly hidden from the view of others and even from the view of God. We rationalize that we are basically good people doing the right things and saying the correct mantras and singing the best songs of worship. 
However, in the depths of our essence there is that secret place that only we think we know. There are those actions and habits and small contrivances of our old sinful nature that pop up during times of temptation and moments of satiating our cravings and our lusts after the forbidden fruits. Just little nibbles, because we basically know better. We satisfy our consciences with the idea that it is just a taste on occasion, just a trifling smidgeon in the indulgence of that which stirs our desires and our fervor for something different once in a while. 
	After all, we are good most of the time. What harm can it do? That is when the truth of this passage comes down upon us full throttle, like the adulterous, murderous actions of a basically good man who abused the power of his kingship to take another man’s wife and foully murder that deceived husband. 
When we try to hide our sin, we are opening our hearts and minds and beings to those situations over which we have no human ability to control. We need to place a guard in our hearts and over our minds to choose to seek after the will and the plan and the purpose of God and turn our backs upon those elements of our lives which can so easily lead to our downfall, no matter how good we may consider our walk on this earth to be. 
Once again, we bring to the forefront the truth of the Word of God that we read earlier in this consideration, Prov 28:13+14. He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, But he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion. How blessed is the man who fears always, But he who hardens his heart will fall into calamity. So be it and amen. 
This morning’s benediction is Eccl 3:14. I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear Him. Amen.