The Four Seasons of Failure - Part A

Here is David looking over the walls of Jerusalem.

The view from his pinnacle was of the kingdom that he ruled and reigned over. But he had a great fall and he would never be the same after this fall. Oh, he'll be forgiven, but he'll never be the same. Even the greatest among us are not immune to falling. And today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Pastor Skip looks into the fall of Israel's greatest king, King David himself. Thank you for joining us today. Connect with Skip Heitzig exists to connect listeners like you to God's truth, strengthening your walk with him and bringing more people into his family.

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Okay, now we're going to be in 2 Samuel 11 as we join Skip for today's lesson. There was a story told a few years ago. It was, I believe, then on ABC Nightly News about a very strange piece of art. It was a chair and fixed to the chair was a shotgun that was loaded. And on a timer, that is, it would go off some time in the next 100 years. The shotgun could go off immediately.

In a week, 20 years, 100 years. The way the art was viewed, it was to be viewed by sitting in the chair and staring right down the barrel of that shotgun for one minute. Now you might think that nobody would want to see that thing, right? You'd be surprised to know that there were lines of people who were waiting to have their one minute in the chair because they were gambling on the idea that, well, it's going to go off, but it won't go off while I'm in the chair. What we essentially have in chapter 11 of 2 Samuel is David's one minute in the chair.

Only while he's in it, the gun goes off. And everything that he knew, especially his reputation, is ruined. 2 Samuel chapter 11, verse 1, it happened in the spring of the year at the time when the kings go out to battle that David sent Joab and his servants with him. And all of Israel. And they destroyed the people of Ammon and besieged Rabbah, but David remained at Jerusalem. Then it happened one evening that David arose from his bed and walked on the roof of the king's house, and from the roof he saw a woman bathing. And the woman was very beautiful to behold. So David sent and inquired about the woman. And someone said, Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliim, the wife of Uriah the Hittite? Then David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her, for she was cleansed from her impurity, and she returned to her house.

And the woman conceived, so she sent and told David, I am with child. I brought a book with me today. You may have heard of this book.

It's been around for a few years. It is called Every Man's Battle. Every Man's Battle. And the subtitle is Winning the War on Sexual Temptation One Victory at a Time. It's a book that's designed to help men who struggle with lust, but also to help women understand a man's struggle. The special target of the book is especially men who feel trapped and feel desperate.

But what is most noticeable is the title. It's not called One Man's Battle or A Few Dudes Problem. Isn't it interesting that it's called Every Man's Battle?

That should tell you something. As the authors of this book write, our maleness brings a natural vulnerability to sexual sin. That was David's battle. And when David should have been out fighting different battles, he was at home losing this one.

And here's what's remarkable. This is David. The one after God's own heart. This is the David who went out after Goliath and won. This is David who became the commander of Saul's army. This is David of whom the song was written.

Saul has slain his thousands, but David has slain his tens of thousands. This is David, the sweet psalmist of Israel. This is David who has a city named after him. They call Jerusalem the city of David.

To this day, the Israelis bear a flag, a blue and white flag, and on that flag is the star of David. This is that David who is tempted. Oscar Wilde, the Irish playwright, said, I can resist anything except temptation. David could have written that line. What we have in 2 Samuel 11 is the Old Testament version of Humpty Dumpty. We might say Humpty David sat on a wall. Humpty David had a great fall. Here is David looking over the walls of Jerusalem. The view from his pinnacle was of the kingdom that he ruled and reigned over. But he had a great fall, and he would never be the same after this fall. Oh, he'll be forgiven, but he'll never be the same.

What you need to keep in mind is what we're reading about is not some sexual pervert or some wild guy at a party, but we're looking at a middle-aged leader's one minute in the chair. I've called this message the four seasons of failure because I've outlined it according to the seasons of the year, spring, summer, fall, and winter. And I've done that because temptations often are like seasons in the year. The warm, alluring breezes that temptation sends forth that draw us into its allure will leave us with that cold, icy, wintery distance from people that we love and from God. The four seasons of failure. Something else that I think is important before we jump into the text and examine it is what we are reading about did not happen all of a sudden. It was severe, but it was not sudden. Any more than a tree doesn't rot suddenly or a couple gets divorced suddenly. There are underlying, overriding factors that have been going on that lead to a culminating moment.

As F.B. Meyer wrote, no man suddenly becomes base. So we're going to begin in the springtime because that is where the text takes us. It's springtime in Jerusalem in the city of David. It says in verse one, it happened in the spring of the year at the time when the kings go out to battle that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel. And they destroyed the people of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But, but, you could underline that word, David remained at Jerusalem.

You can immediately see the problem. Why, if it's spring and spring is the time the kings go to war, why does this king not go to war? Why does he stay home? David, the king, stays home when kings go to war.

Now, just a little note about that little phrase, because it sounds odd to us. It's springtime and it's sort of like, oh, it's baseball season. You know, it's fighting season. It's wartime. The rains fell in the wintertime and the roads for chariots became very soft and muddy.

So you'd want to wait till the latter rains were finished. So sometime the end of April, beginning of May, it was fighting time. And if you know anything about David at all, besides being a psalmist, he was a fighter. It was his wheelhouse. He was a man of the battlefield.

Listen to his resume. 1 Samuel chapter 17, David fought against Goliath and the Philistines. 1 Samuel chapter 18, David is given a high rank in Saul's army. 1 Samuel 18 verse 13, David is given charge over a thousand men. 1 Samuel 22, he gathers a ragtag army of malcontents around him.

This is when Saul pursues him to kill him. 1 Samuel 23, he attacks the Philistines and saves Keilah. 1 Samuel 25, his army grows to several hundred men. 1 Samuel 27, David and his men flee to Gath.

He is given the city of Ziklag to settle in. And from there he conducts raids against the Gesherites, the Gerzites, and the Amalekites. 1 Samuel chapter 30, David defeats the Amalekites. 2 Samuel chapter 5, David becomes king of Israel and conquers Jerusalem, the city of David. 2 Samuel chapter 8, he has a war against the Philistines, the Moabites, the Syrians, the Edomites. What's my point?

Simply this. David belonged among the soldiers. It's what he did. The Bible records him among all the things that he did as a man of the battlefield. He was a warrior. And this is the very reason God wouldn't allow him to build the temple because he was called a man of blood. David, you have blood on your hands. I don't want you to touch my temple. So, why does he stay back?

You want to hear my profound answer? I have no idea. We're not told why. I can only guess. We know he's older now. He's middle-aged.

And maybe he's thinking, look, I've fought enough battles. I'm older now. That's a young man's game. I'll stay home.

Let them take care of it. Number two, he's gotten used to the soft life. He's a king. He's in a palace. And when you're surrounded by wealth and poshness, you don't long to be on a tent in a sleeping bag on a battlefield.

He's gotten a little softer. Or number three, perhaps he's thinking, since Rabbah isn't too far from Jerusalem, I can manage the battle from here. I can get people to run up and run back to the battle lines, and I can get and give information and conduct the battle long distance. I don't know why, but I know this.

If David would have been on the battlefield with his men, he would not have been in bed with a woman. And here's the point. Your greatest battles don't come when you're busy. They come when you're bored.

Now, I'm going to risk sounding like your grandmother. Beware of idleness. You've heard your grandma or your grandpa say, an idle mind is the devil's workshop. One thing we know is that up to this point, David was always busy doing something. He was a shepherd. After a shepherd, he was a musician. Then he returned to the sheepfold to be a shepherd. Then he was an errand boy for the king. Then he was a soldier. Then he became a commander. Then he became a fugitive. And now he's the king. And he slows down. He stops.

He puts it all away, and he stays back. I mentioned that he's older now. He's in middle age by Chapter 11. And maybe you think that the older you get, the easier it gets in terms of temptation. That every man's battle gets easier as every man gets older. If you think that, you're mistaken.

The authors of this book write this. Perhaps you've mustered the hope that you would someday be free from sexual sin and expected to grow out of it as naturally as you grew into it, like outgrowing acne. Perhaps you waited each birthday for your sexual purity to clear up, but it never did. Later, you assumed you'd be free naturally through marriage.

But as for many of us, that didn't happen either. It didn't happen for David. David was married. He had seven wives and 10 concubines. He had 17 women in his life. It didn't clear up for him. And he's now in his middle age with several women. So we go from springtime in David's city to summertime in David's sight.

Things are sizzling inside his mind, his heart, what he sees. Verse 2, then it happened. One evening, the David arose from his bed and walked on the roof of the king's house. And from the roof, he saw a woman bathing.

The woman was very beautiful to behold. My guess is David couldn't sleep. He's probably thinking about the battle or he's thinking about expanding the kingdom.

So he gets up and he takes a walk on his house. Now Jerusalem is built on hills and guess where kings live? Top of the hill. The only thing higher than his house was God's house. The temple was a little bit higher, but just next to the temple, down on a little precipice was the palace of the king. Many of us stood in David's palace or the foundations of it just months ago. From there, the city drops off very steeply so that from the king's house, you can virtually see every house around you in plain view.

Rooftops are flat. People will often be out there. So David's on his rooftop looking down at every other rooftop in the valley. And he saw something. Something entered his view that every man, every man can understand. He saw a woman.

Very beautiful to behold. I suppose if this were written in modern times, it might say that David was sitting on the couch with his TV remote late at night or David was sitting in front of his computer screen, sort of aimlessly searching and surfing the Internet. But David, the king of Israel, was on his house and he was looking out. Now, there's two words in verse 2 I want you to compare.

I'm glad you brought your Bibles to see this. Notice the two words. The first is he saw a woman and that she was very beautiful to what?

What's the next word? Behold. Those two words saw and behold.

Now, those words are different. The first word suggests a glance. He just saw her. He noticed her.

Couldn't help that. It's what he saw. It came into his view. But the second word suggests a gaze, not a glance. He went from seeing to beholding. He couldn't help the first look. It's the double take that killed him.

It's the what? And he stayed looking and fixated, and it turned into a lustful look. Jesus said in Matthew 5, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not commit adultery, but I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust after her in his heart has already committed adultery with her in his heart. As I said, David's sin wasn't the look.

It was the lingering look. Men, every man, men have a visual ignition switch. That is, the pleasure centers of the male brain are turned on, revved up by simply seeing someone like David saw.

And by the way, those pleasure centers are indiscriminate. It could be any woman. And this is where the battle is won or lost because once you see something, it's now what do you do with what you see? Do you keep on seeing?

Do you go from seeing to beholding, or do you turn away and see something else? David should have done that. What David should have done, couldn't help the first look, he noticed, oops, out of here. I mean, Joseph literally ran from his situation. Genesis 39, Potiphar's wife grabs him and says, come to bed with me. And he didn't stay around and go, well, let me pray about that. He just ran away.

So can you. Job understood the power of the look. That's why in Job chapter 31 verse 1, he says, I've made a covenant with my eyes that I will not look upon a young woman. A wise driver once said, he who looketh on a woman loseth a fender. I'll tell you a true story, honest confession. I was 15, maybe 16 years of age. I went from a permit to a driver's license, Southern California. My mode of transportation was a Honda 305 motorcycle.

And the only accident I've ever been in, where I got in an accident while I was driving, was this one. I'm on a motorcycle, I'm driving down the street, almost home. I'm following a car, but I'm distracted by a beautiful girl on the side of the road.

And my eyes followed her. I'm following her, I'm following her, and I'm supposed to be driving. And what I don't notice is the car in front of me is now slowing down to make a turn. I plow into the back of the car.

I fly over the car and land on the street in front of the car. Talk about a wake-up call in this area. That did it. Now, we naturally focus on David and David's lust and David's sin. But I do have to say something about Bathsheba. If Bathsheba wasn't taking a bath out on the top of her rooftop in plain sight, it sure would have helped. She had to have known the vulnerability of that situation given the topography of Jerusalem, if you can walk out on your roof and see it that easily.

She had to have known that. So I just want to say, women, try to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. Help us out here a little bit. You know what I'm saying. Your physical appearance can be a snare. Don't give us something to lust after. Don't make it easy.

A.W. Pink, Arthur Pink, writes, If lustful looking is so grievous a sin, then those who dress and expose themselves with the desire to be looked at and lusted after are not less but perhaps more guilty. In this matter, it is not only too often the case that men sin, but women tempt them to do so.

How great then must be the guilt of a great majority of modern Misses who deliberately seek to arouse the sexual passions of young men. Bathsheba, take it inside. So now we go down to verse 3 and we go from the springtime in David's city, the summertime in David's sight, to the fall. This is the fall.

This is Humpty Dumpty falling. This is fall time in David's sanctity. So David sent and inquired about the woman. Seems innocent at first. I just want to ask a few questions, find out a few facts. Just one little step toward Sodom, like Lot did.

Just find out. He inquired about the woman. And someone said, Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliim, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?

Then David sent messengers and took her and she came to him and he lay with her. Oh, I hate reading this. It's so quick. It's so cold.

There's no love here. This is just pure passion, raw sex. For she was cleansed from her impurity and she returned to her house. And the woman conceived and she sent and told David and said, I am with child. You probably know that kings in those days could take anything they wanted, any one they wanted.

They would develop a harem. But, but, this is a different king. This is God's king. This is the kingdom of Israel.

And according to the law of Israel, there should be one man and one woman for one lifetime. That's Skip High Tech with a message from the series Crash and Burn. Find the full message as well as books, booklets and full teaching series at connectwithskip.com. Right now, we want to share about a resource that will equip you to see God's truth, His will and your future with clear eyes and strong vision. Listen to what the message version of the Bible says about the necessity of a clear vision for the future. If people can't see what God is doing, they stumble all over themselves.

But when they attend to what He reveals, they are most blessed. Vision for your life. That's the theme of our resource package that features five excellent full length messages by Skip, including six things that will surprise you about heaven and God's purpose for people. Now, here's a comment from Skip Heitzig on the topic of purpose. God has a desire. God has a purpose for you. And one of His purposes for you is that you know Him, that He walk with you, that you do life together with Him. Do you walk with God?

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I want to know God. Clear vision for your life. That's the theme of our vision resource package that features five excellent full length messages by Skip, including six things that will surprise you about heaven and God's purpose for people. You'll want to order our vision resource package for this month, which also features a full color magazine about the vision that drives Skip's ministry. You'll also receive an audio copy of Skip clearly outlining his philosophy of ministry in the past, present and future. Receive your vision package when you make a donation of $50 or more to Connect with Skip.

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That's Connect to 74759. Then be on the lookout for your first message, a video from Pastor Skip welcoming you to the group. Come back tomorrow to discover how David finds forgiveness despite his failings and how you can too. Will David be forgiven?

Yes, he will. Immorality is not an unforgivable sin. Of course, he'll be forgiven. Yes, and that's a whole different message. But what I want you to hear is that the consequences of sexual sin are unique in the pain and the shame that they bring. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on his word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Hyten is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.