Days rolled into weeks after David’s fling with Bathsheba. Then came the bombshell: “I am pregnant”, the woman sent to the king. The military man in David came alive immediately as he began to put strategy in place to cover it up. First was to invite Uriah to come from the warfront. It was planned to be a holiday for him and a sort of reunion with the family. The bait did not work. Then the king got him drunk before asking him to go home. Out of principle Uriah refused. In frustration the king’s next line of action was to eliminate him. That seemed to work at first. Now he could legally marry Bathsheba and be seen to be doing the widow a favour in the eye of all Israelites. It is quite curious that despite what David had done there was not a word from the Lord yet to reprimand him. That would come about a year later, after the baby had been born.
The moment you start judging others you have at the same time established parameters by which you will be judged. If you keep condemning others you cannot escape condemnation one way or the other.
Enter Nathan. He spoke a parable to paint the picture of a heinous crime that had been committed by a big man against a commoner. The sense of justice in David jacked back to life as he fired, “the man that hath done this thing shall surely die”. He did not stop there. He actually added in the next verse that he would make the man pay fourfold before he would be killed. You can only imagine what David would be reduced to when Nathan pointed the accusing finger at the king as the culprit. The point is this, if David knew that he was fixing his own sentence would he have gone for the maximum punishment in the book? Certainly not. This is what we do when we assume the judgment seat in other people’s matters. We condemn other people’s children; and when our own children are faulty we excuse them that they are just kids. It doesn’t work that way. The moment you start judging others you have at the same time established parameters by which you will be judged. If you keep condemning others you cannot escape condemnation one way or the other.
