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Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: Selfishness (05/14/26)
Actions of Selfishness

The root word of selfishness is self. To be selfish means to think only of oneself. Selfishness is having only one’s own interest at heart. It is literally thinking only of oneself. Selfishness is disregarding the interest, the welfare, and the well-being of others. Some of the greatest leaders in the Bible have had to deal with actions of selfishness. Israel’s first two kings dealt with the ugly, unloving reality of selfishness.

In selfishness King Saul disobeyed the commandment of the Lord, when the Lord commanded him to completely destroy the Amalekites and everything that they possessed. God instructed him to let nothing of the Amalekites survive (I Samuel 15: 1-3). King Saul did not destroy all of the Amalekites and everything that they had. He kept Agag, the king of the Amalekites, alive and spared and kept the best of the animals and livestock alive (I Samuel 15: 8-9).

When the prophet Samuel confronts King Saul about his disobedience, Saul claims he took the best of the spoil of the Amalekites to sacrifice the best of it unto the Lord (I Samuel 15: 13-15). The prophet Samuel reprimands King Saul for Sauls’s disobedience. He tells Saul that because he rejected God’s command, God has rejected him from being king over Israel (I Samuel 15: 26).

Israel’s second king, King David also battled with the inner enemy of selfishness on two separate occasions. King David’s first act of selfishness occurs in 2 Samuel chapter eleven. In this chapter, it is recorded that King David stayed behind at Jerusalem when he was supposed to be out at war. One evening while walking on the roof of his house, King David sees a woman bathing. He sends messengers to enquire about who this woman was. They told King David that the woman was Bath-sheba, the wife of Uriah, the Hittite (2 Samuel 11: 1-3). David knowing that Bath-sheba was a married woman, still selfishly sends for her and sleeps with her and ends up conceiving a child with her. When Bath-sheba tells King David that she is pregnant by him, David sends for Joab and tells Joab to send for Uriah to come to him. David tries to get Uriah to go to his home in hopes that he would lie with his wife, Bath-sheba. Uriah refuses to go home to be with his wife. David went as far as getting Uriah drunk in hopes that Uriah would go home to Bath-sheba, but Uriah went not down to his house (2 Samuel 11: 4-13).

So, King David devises another selfish plan through the hands of Joab. King David writes Joab a letter. “And he wrote in the letter, saying, Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten, and die,” (2 Samuel 11: 15). So, Joab does exactly as King David instructed him to do in his letter. Uriah is killed in battle just as David had ordered (2 Samuel 11: 17). When Bath-sheba finds out her husband, Uriah is dead she mourns for him. After her mourning is over, David takes Bath-sheba to be his wife. This act of selfishness on King David’s part displeases the Lord (2 Samuel 11: 26-27).

A second act of selfishness that King David committed against the Lord is when he took an improper census of the people of Israel. The devil had provoked King David to take this census (I Chronicles 21: 1). David took the census to see how many men of war he had (I Chronicles 21: 5). This upset the Lord. The Lord gave David one choice out of three punishments. The three choices were a famine in the land, David being pursued by his enemies for three months, or a three-day pestilence in the land (2 Samuel 24: 13). David asked God to spare his life, so the pestilence was sent by God in the land. David chose to have the punishment applied to the people. King David selfishly brought death on 70,000 men who died because of the pestilence (2 Samuel 24: 15). David at first had only his own interest at heart. He cared more about preserving his life, than the lives of thousands of people within Israel.

The opposite of selfishness is selflessness. Jesus Christ committed the greatest act of selflessness—self-sacrifice. Jesus cared so much for the welfare of others that he laid down his life for the sins of the world.
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Member Comments
Member
Date
Terry R A Eissfeldt 
05/21/26
Very good teaching - Blessings
Loni Bowden-Horn 
05/22/26
Some very good lessons for all of us to learn and you effectively tied the stories of King David with some of the selfish ways he acted until it was pointed out to him by a prophet and he repented but those actions caused incredible sorrow throughout his life.