The Daily Fountain Devotional of the Church Of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) 14 August 2025: The Heart Is Desperately Wicked
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TOPIC: The Heart Is Desperately Wicked
READ: 2 Samuel 11:14-27 (NKJV)
- In the morning it happened that David wrote a letter to Joab and sent [it] by the hand of Uriah.
- And he wrote in the letter, saying, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retreat from him, that he may be struck down and die.”
- So it was, while Joab besieged the city, that he assigned Uriah to a place where he knew there [were] valiant men.
- Then the men of the city came out and fought with Joab. And [some] of the people of the servants of David fell; and Uriah the Hittite died also.
- Then Joab sent and told David all the things concerning the war,
- and charged the messenger, saying, “When you have finished telling the matters of the war to the king,
- if it happens that the king’s wrath rises, and he says to you: ‘Why did you approach so near to the city when you fought? Did you not know that they would shoot from the wall?
- ‘Who struck Abimelech the son of Jerubbesheth? Was it not a woman who cast a piece of a millstone on him from the wall, so that he died in Thebez? Why did you go near the wall?’ — then you shall say, ‘Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.’ “
- So the messenger went, and came and told David all that Joab had sent by him.
- And the messenger said to David, “Surely the men prevailed against us and came out to us in the field; then we drove them back as far as the entrance of the gate.
- “The archers shot from the wall at your servants; and [some] of the king’s servants are dead, and your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.”
- Then David said to the messenger, “Thus you shall say to Joab: ‘Do not let this thing displease you, for the sword devours one as well as another. Strengthen your attack against the city, and overthrow it.’ So encourage him.”
- When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she mourned for her husband.
- And when her mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD.
THE MESSAGE:
Trust in the flesh is misplaced trust. The heart of man on its own is desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). Having committed immorality with Bathsheba, David began to look for smart ways to cover his sin. This is typical of a natural heart. When it appeared as if he had failed, he devised a means to take the life of the ‘righteous’ Uriah and bring a total closure to the matter. He may not have set out from the onset to kill Uriah, however, one sin led to the other.
The whole narrative only portrays the fact that the heart of man is wicked and cannot be trusted. From the fall of man at Eden till the destruction of the first world by flood in the time of Noah, God lamented the poor state of the heart of man (Genesis 6:5-6). The only cure for the heart remains the efficacy of the blood of Jesus. This blood has the ability to cleanse and make a heart acceptable to God. The only requirement is total submission to Christ as Lord and Master
PRAYER: Change my heart, O God, make it new that I may be like You, Amen!
