So you don’t need me to tell you that we’ve gone off the cliff sexually. That rock we were on was Christ. But the citizens of these United States have, via sexual perversion, plunged themselves into a dark and dreary land. God has wired the world to work this way: sex is a means to a flourishing civilization or it is a means to a civilization liken to a vile brothel. Either way, sex is inherently political. That word political is like a flatbed truck that can carry stacks of meaning. So let’s go with political in the sense of concerned with public affairs and questions of authority and government. Sex, which ought of course to be done in private, never stays private. It always concerns public affairs, authority, and government.
So Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recently moved to ban “transition-related care” for minors who are confused about whether they are male or female. And that act of government not only concerns sex, but our long-standing sexual perversion produced the kind of society wherein such an act of government was called for. That society is called Sodom and Gomorrah 2.0. And we should remember what happened to the prototype.
There is a way to restore our society from the broken down brothel it has become to a flourishing civilization where the marriage bed is honored. That way is signaled in the story of David and Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11.
The Text – A Summary
During a time when kings went to battle, David was not where kings were to be—he was on his couch (v. 2). He saw Bathsheba from atop his house. He sent messengers to inquire about her. Then, upon hearing she is the wife of Uriah, he “took her” (v. 4). He laid with her. She conceived a child and informed David she was pregnant.
We know from 2 Samuel 23 that David had thirty mighty men, and Uriah was one of them. David knew him. Bathsheba is identified as the daughter of Eliam, who was also one of David’s thirty mighty men. So David committed adultery with the wife of one of his most valiant, leading soldiers. And he slept with the daughter of one of his most valiant, leading soldiers. But, there is more to this tragedy. Eliam, the father of Bathsheba, was son to Ahitophel. And Ahitophel was one of David’s chief counselors. It is no surprise that when Absalom, the son of David rebeled against him, Ahitophel left David and sided with Absalom. So David committed adultery with the granddaughter of one of his chief counselors.
David sent word to Joab to send back Uriah the Hittite from the battlefield (v. 6). He aimed to cover up his sin by having Uriah sleep with his wife and consider the child his own. Uriah honorably resisted David’s attempts to get him to go home to his wife, saying he would not go to his home while the army was in the field. David attempted his plan a second time, getting Uriah drunk. But, Uriah again resisted, sleeping at the door of the king’s house.
David then sent Uriah back to Joab with his own death warrant in his hand. Joab followed orders and Uriah died along with other servants of David. When David heard the news, he played it down for the messenger (v. 25). After Bathsheba’s time of mourning for her dead husband, David took her to be his wife and she bore a son (v. 27). And what David had done displeased the LORD.
Political Sex
We tend to think of ourselves as mere individuals. And it follows that we don’t see the destruction that our sexual immorality is bringing upon us. David and Bathsheba remind us of the political nature of sex. Not merely because David was a king. His kingship is right on the surface and it does matter. But this act of adultery involved Uriah, Eliam, Ahitophel, Joab, a child in the womb, and David’s whole house. Nathan would soon deliver God’s word to David, “Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house; because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife” (2 Samuel 12:10). The whole kingdom of Israel was impacted by David’s sin.
Along these lines, it is foolish when people approve of various sexual perversions by saying, “What’s wrong with it? It is not harming anyone else.” Sexual perversion is, of course, harming others. Consider some raw statistics, “Since 1975, roughly one-quarter of all pregnancies were aborted. One-third of all children were born to single mothers. One-half of all marriages ended in divorce. Two-thirds of all African American children were raised without a father present. Children from broken homes proved two to three times more likely to have behavioral and learning problems than children from two-parent homes. Single mothers faced four times the rates of bankruptcy and eviction. More than two-thirds of juveniles and young adults convicted of major felonies came from single- or no-parent homes” (From Sacrament to Contract, Location 128).
If those stats sound bad, know that they are from a decade ago, back when America was so Christian that Barack Obama opposed gay marriage. If it was that bad back then, then buckle up, “If in the land of peace . . . they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan” (Jeremiah 12:5)?
The King Who Restores
I said at the outset that there is a way to restoration. We don’t have to go on living in this broken down brothel. That way of restoration goes by the name of the Greater David, the Lord Jesus Christ. King David fell short. But we have been told that a son of his would sit upon an eternal throne. That King can heal the nations, even one that has plunged itself into sexual insanity and destruction. The arm of the LORD is not too short to save. But make no mistake about it. That is the only thing that will do: the arm of the LORD.