Then Came Sin | Part 1

We see that David was a tragedy of tragedies that happened in the life of King David.

But it is there. David was a great sinner at this point, but he was nonetheless a man after God's own heart, and he was a great repentant. But he was also a great repenter. 2 Samuel 11 is a dark chapter in the history of David's life. He was at the height of his career, seeing continuous blessing from God. But then came sin, and everything changed. If you have your Bible, turn to 2 Samuel 11, as Adrian Rogers begins Part 1 of Then Came Sin. Now I want you to take your Bibles and turn to 2 Samuel 11. This is a dark chapter in the history of David's life. This is the chapter where David commits adultery.

We're going to entitle our message tonight, Then Came Sin. Here is David at really the zenith of his career. Seems like he has everything right at his feet, and that God is blessing him in such a wonderful way. He's a man after God's own heart. He really loves the Lord. I can hardly believe that we could see this tragedy of tragedies that happened in the life of King David.

But it is there. And when the Bible paints a portrait, the Bible paints that portrait from head to toe without a detail left out. One of the ways we know that it is an inspired book because it does not gloss over the sins of the saints.

It paints them warts and all. Look, if you will, please, in 2 Samuel 11 and verse 1. And it came to pass after the year was expired at the time when kings go forth to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel, and they destroyed the children of Ammon and besieged Rabbah, but David tarried still at Jerusalem. Now notice the word but, and it's there as to make you understand that it's not the time that he should have been at Jerusalem, but David tarried still at Jerusalem.

Verse 2. And it came to pass in an evening tide that David arose from off his bed and walked up on the roof of the king's house. And from the roof he saw a woman washing herself, and the woman was very beautiful to look upon. And David sent and inquired after the woman, and one said, Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliim, the wife of Uriah the Hittite? And David sent messengers and took her, and she came in unto him, and he lay with her, for she was purified from her uncleanness, and she returned unto her house.

And the woman conceived, and sent and told David, and said, I am with child. Now we're going to talk more about the details of what happened to King David in another message. We're going to talk in greater details about the cause of David's sin, what caused him to be swept up in this terrible, horrible thing. We're going to talk more about the consequences of David's sin. We're going to be talking more about the cleansing of David's sin in later messages because this is a very important episode in the life of King David. David was a man worth studying.

David was a great sinner at this point, but he was nonetheless a man after God's own heart, and he was a great repenter. But I want to speak to you in a more general sense tonight about the sin of adultery, how important it is that we speak clearly and forthrightly concerning the sin of sexual impurity, fornication, and adultery that is eating the very vitals out of our nation and even is creeping into the lives of some who name the name of Jesus Christ, God forbid. I was looking at Ann Landers' column, and the title of Ann Landers' column, which I generally do not read, I don't read her column, but I saw the title of the column, and it so caught my eye as I was going through the paper. I read a little of the column.

I haven't read all the column, but I read the lead article. The lead article says virginity proves no moral superiority. Now, what she meant is virginity among those who have not yet been married. She's saying that you're not morally superior if, as a married person, you keep yourself pure, if you save yourself for the one that you're going to marry, if you go to the marriage altar a virgin, that you are not necessarily morally superior. And I'm going to read this article. Dear Ann Landers, I read your column regularly and was surprised that you showed no sign of your usual good sense in your responses to either, quote, bargain basement blues, end of quote, or searching for truth in Warchester, end of quote.

Evidently the names of two people who signed their names with a cryptic name. Both men seemed obsessed with marrying virgins. Neither said he was coming to the marriage bed with no prior experience. Don't you think it's time to stop glorifying virginity as if it were a jewel in the crown of womanhood? How much better to emphasize the importance of mutual respect, caring and behaving responsibly one toward another. I was not a virgin when I married, but I certainly was no tramp.

My relationships were not one night stands, nor did I feel ever obligated to go to bed with a man because he bought me a dinner. Since you're in the forefront of forming public opinion in this country, I hope you will abandon the notion that unless a woman is untouched until her wedding night, she is somehow forever flawed. And then this person signs the name not guilty in Elmira. And Ann Landers says, Dear L, who me?

You've got the wrong number. If a woman can hold out until marriage in the face of all the social pressures to do otherwise, she deserves to be commended. But glorified?

No. I have been reading this mail long enough to know that some females do everything but and with several partners. Clinically they're virgins, but their morals are vastly inferior to women who have had meaningful, notice this, meaningful relationships with men they loved and respected and to whom they remain faithful. Now, what she has done in very fluent language has said it is all right for a person to have an immoral relationship or a sexual relationship before marriage, if indeed that is a meaningful relationship. And our young people are being fed this. This is not all that outstanding a letter one way or the other.

I think that Ann Landers has got room to rent upstairs unfurnished. But it's not all that outstanding a letter. I mean, on this particular point, she does. But I'm just bringing this as an example, an illustration that we live in a generation where young people are being told this day after day after day after day after day from a thousand different ways. And that somehow it's not all that bad.

You choose this or you choose that. But you see, they tell us that we have gone through a moral revolution and that old-fashioned laws of morality are out of date like a Model T Ford, like a kerosene lamp, and that today things are different. And it's the Playboy generation. It's the hedonist generation.

It is the anything-goes generation. And because of it, our young people and our adults are being sucked down into swirling sewers of sin and ungodly philosophies. Now, David sinned against his marriage. Now, David, of course, did not understand, to begin with, the beauties of a monogamous marriage. Let me tell you what God intended for a man and a woman. God's plan was for one man, and is, rather, for one man to be married to one woman until death do them part.

One man to be married to one woman until death do them part. Marriage is the first institution created by Almighty God. Marriage came before laws. Marriage came before government. Marriage came before civilization. Marriage came before the church. Marriage came and God gave to man marriage even before God gave to man a system of worship. And regardless of the tragic failures of the past, the idea of love and being in marriage and to establish a family is something that is in the bosom of human beings.

It has come from God, and therefore we see it as it blooms afresh in every generation. There are those who have tried to stamp out marriage and to eradicate marriage and to tell us that marriage is some sort of a social invention, that it just came up from the swamps of immorality, but that is not so. God made us in the beginning male and female, and God put into the truest and best instincts of man a mating instinct for one man to be married to one woman. Marriage is divine in creation, and therefore marriage, listen, of all human relationships is supreme in commitment. Jesus said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh. Your supreme relationship is not to your parents.

For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother. I love my children. I thank God for my children. I would lay down and die for any of my children.

I don't even think I'd have to bat an eyelash to think about it. But they are not my supreme earthly commitment. My commitment to my wife is a stronger commitment than my commitment to my precious children that I love so much.

This thing of marriage is to be the supreme earthly relationship, the supreme earthly commitment, a greater commitment than you will have toward your parents, a greater commitment than you will have to your children. Your business is not your supreme commitment. I'm getting sick and tired of businesses moving people around like they're checkers on a board somehow, and some bunch of moguls get up there behind a mahogany desk, and they say, let's move Smith to Des Moines, and let's move Brown over here to Timbuktu somewhere, and he gets the notice, and he just goes and tells his neighbors and tells his friends, goodbye, I've got to go. Why?

Because the business says so. Now, dear friend, you have no right to move around unless God leads you any more than a pastor has to move around unless God leads him. It took just as much of the blood of Jesus Christ to save you as it did me. You say, well, I'm getting a better offer.

What would you think of a pastor? Say, well, I'm getting a better offer. Don't pay me a little more money over there. Toodle-oo. You say, well, goodbye. Wish you'd gone sooner.

Yeah. Well, you see, it takes just as much of the blood of Jesus to save you as it does me. We're not our own. We belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, and a man ought to consider his wife, and a man ought to consider his family. One man's wife was complaining about the fact that he was moving, and she didn't want to go and some other things.

He was staying out late. His business and business and business and business, and she was making sacrifice after sacrifice, and she hardly ever saw him. And she said something about it, and this is what this man said to her. He said, if she wants to stay with me, she ought to realize that it's my job that's important. I can always get another wife.

I can't get another job. You see, the corporation is almost like that other wife, that we're supposed to woo that wife, and they're supposed to woo us. I want to tell you, dear friend, that marriage is divine in creation, and it is supreme in commitment, and it is to be faithful in continuance. One man is to be married to one woman until death do them part.

We are to stay married, and that marriage is to be a pure marriage. But I want you just right now in a more generalized sense, in a more topical sense for just a few moments, I want you to see the horrible, horrible, terrible sin of adultery. God has said in His word, thou shalt not commit adultery. When a man commits adultery, he sins. And how does he sin? Well, number one, he sins against himself.

Turn, if you will, please, to 1 Corinthians chapter 6 and verse 18. The Bible says, flee fornication. Now, what does the word fornication come from?

It's the same word we get our word pornographic from or pornography. Fornication means sexual immorality. It can mean sexual immorality before marriage, or it can mean sexual immorality after marriage. Some people have the idea that fornication is the sexual sin before marriage, that adultery is the sexual sin after marriage. They're correct in saying that adultery is the name of sexual sin after marriage. But sexual sin after marriage may also be called fornication. Fornication is just the larger word, the less specific word.

For example, we might say that all Memphis is Tennessee, but not all Tennessee is Memphis. And all adultery is fornication, but not all fornication is adultery. And so when God is saying here, just flee fornication, he's just saying in the larger sense, just flee sexual immorality. Flee fornication. Now, let's continue to read in verse 18. For every sin that a man doeth is without the body, but he that comitteth fornication sinneth against his own body.

I want to tell you something. There is no sin in the catalog of sins that will do you more damage, that will do you more hurt, that will do you more harm that I know of than the sin of sexual impurity and immorality. It is harmful spiritually. It is harmful psychologically. It is harmful physically. And when God therefore says don't commit adultery, he's not trying to keep us from sex.

He's trying to keep sex for us. It is God's gift. And so therefore it is to be used in its proper context, rightfully used, wonderful.

Wrongfully used, horrible. If you say to me, Brother Rogers, there's a fire in your house. Well, if it's in the walls, horrible.

If it's in the oven and Joyce is making biscuits, wonderful. It all depends on where it is. You say there's some sod where you live. Well, if it's in the front yard, wonderful. If it's on the living room rug, horrible.

And what is beautiful in the front yard is just plain dirt on the rug. And what I'm saying is that as Peter Marshall said that sex will be the nicest and the tastiest thing in your life. Oh, the harm that is done. Billy Graham was preaching. He said that he talked to the head psychiatrist at one of the great Eastern universities and this psychiatrist talked to him about how many students on the campus of that university were suffering psychological problems because of their illicit sexual escapades. And then I pick up the newspapers and read about venereal disease being pandemic and all kinds of new strains of venereal disease. And frankly, folks, I'm embarrassed to even speak of such things, but I feel impelled. It is just simply God's way of saying be sure your sin will find you out.

And you'll find out that when you commit this sin, you sin against yourself, your best interest in ways perhaps that you would never even dream. Lord Byron was gifted, witty, charming, handsome, dashing. He was the centerpiece of every party in his day, but he lived a loose and profligate life. And Lord Byron said at the end of his young life, my days are in the yellow leaf. The flowers and the fruits of life are gone.

The worm, the canker, and the grief are mine alone. But not only does a man sin against himself when he commits adultery like David did, and David so sinned against David. But I'll tell you what else a man does. He sins against his family, and all how a man sins when he sins against his family. And we've said it so long that it sounds trite, but the family is the basic unit of society. And when a man commits adultery, he sins against that unit. When a woman commits adultery, she sins against that unit. And the lives of thousands of innocent children are being torn apart every year by a tragedy called divorce.

And divorce is the only game people play where nobody wins and everybody loses. Monogamous marriage was established by God the Creator, listen to me, for the protection and the development of the deepest, listen to me now, the deepest psychological, physical, and spiritual needs of humanity. God gave us the family to provide for the love, the physical care, the social and physical and spiritual development of children.

God knew that little babies needed homes where mother and daddy loved one another and where they're committed one to another. But not only is adultery a sin against oneself, it is a sin against one's family, but it is also a sin against the people of God. When David, so long ago as the king, committed adultery, he not only sinned against his family and self, he sinned against God's people because he was the leader of God's people.

He was a part of God's people. And just the same, we today are bound together in a community of faith and love and partnership, and the Bible says we are members one of another. 1 Corinthians 3 and verse 16 says, Know ye not that ye are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? And again the Bible says, Know ye not that we are members one of another? And then the Bible says, If any man defile the temple of God, him will God destroy.

In plain English, church wreckers, God will wreck. But he says this in the context, these verses of sexual immorality. Now you might be sitting there thinking, well, that's my private life, and it's none of your business what I do in my private life.

I want to tell you something. If you're in this church, it is absolutely my business what you do in your private life. Not only my business, but the business of the person sitting next to you on either side before and behind you happens to be a member of this church. We are members one of another. Now maybe you didn't understand that when you got in the church. Maybe you'd like to get out, and I invite you to leave. Really?

Seriously? If you don't understand that, I invite you to come up and say I didn't understand that. I didn't know when I was getting into a church what I was getting into. I'm sorry. I want out. If you want out, we'll pray for you and try to lead you to stay in, but if you still want out, then we'll say go. We'll let you go.

Let me tell you something, friend. When we come into a church, one to another, we are members of the same body. What hurts you hurts me. It's like a person in a big ocean liner says, I believe I want some more fresh air, so he knocks a hole in the wall of the ship by him, saying, well, that's my business. Well, not if I'm on board. It's our business.

It's our business. I want to tell you, dear friend, anybody who lives in a sexually impure life is sinning against his church. He is helping to wreck his church, and so it is a sin against the church, but not only that. Adultery is a sin against the nation. Somebody said that Rome fell because of three reasons. Number one, she dug her grave with her teeth.

Number two, she killed herself with illicit sex, and number three, she embalmed herself with alcohol. The Bible says, Proverbs chapter 14, verse 34, Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. And coming up tomorrow, we'll hear part two of this important message, but maybe today you have questions about Jesus, who he is, what he means to you, how you can begin a relationship with God through Christ. Go to our Discover Jesus page at lwf.org slash radio, and you'll find resources and materials that will answer questions you may have about your faith. Again, go to lwf.org slash radio and click the Discover Jesus page at the top. Now, if you'd like to order a copy of today's message in its entirety, you can call us at 1-877-LOVEGOD.

Mention the title, Then Came Sin. This message is also part of the insightful series, Live Like a King. For that complete collection, all 12 powerful messages, call 1-877-LOVEGOD, or you can order online at lwf.org slash radio, or write us at Love Worth Finding, Box 38600, Memphis, Tennessee 38183. Thank you for joining us in our study of God's Word today. If you'd like to start receiving daily devotions and links to the program, sign up for our daily heartbeat emails at lwf.org slash radio.

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