Sin's Deception

I have your Bibles with you today. Turn with me if you would to 2 Samuel chapter 11.

We're going to be looking at verses 1 through 4. Now from the roof a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful. And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, Is not this Bathsheba the daughter of Eliim, the wife of Uriah the Hittite? So David sent messengers and took her. She came to him and he lay with her. Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.

Then she returned to her house. Bow with me as we go to our Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father we have been studying the life of David for almost a year. We've seen great spiritual and physical victories. We've seen trial and tribulation. We've seen emotional highs and emotional lows. Today we see a moral failure.

This is almost hard to believe. David was a man after your own heart. He was the apple of your eye. He wrote over half the Psalms. He rose to the position of king of Israel.

We expected better than this. We shouldn't because David was fallible just like we are. He broke spiritual principles. He got lazy in his thought life.

He became spiritually careless. And the enemy attacked and the enemy defeated David. We know that David repented and you forgave him but there were consequences that David had to deal with for the rest of his life. Father help us to understand why this incident is placed so prominently in your word. May this story break our pride and increase our fear of God. May David's sin convict us and challenge us to a deeper, holier walk with you. Help me to preach today as a dying man to dying people. For it is in the precious, holy name of Jesus that we pray.

Amen. You may be seated. Several years ago I was watching an episode of the TV show MASH. And on this particular show the priest, Father Mulcahy, came running up to Colonel Potter and said, We've got a terrible problem. And Colonel Potter said, Well Padre, what is it? And he said, We just got in a new shipment of Bibles and there's been a misprint. And he took the Bible and he opened it up to Exodus chapter 20 and he said, Listen to what they did to the seventh commandment. And he read these words, Thou shalt commit adultery. And everybody laughed and the colonel said to him, Don't worry about it Padre, just send that shipment of Bibles back.

It'll be okay. And the Padre breathed a sigh of relief. After that I had to think about what was done there and why they did it the way they did it. Why is it that they used the seventh commandment to make a joke? Why didn't they use another commandment?

Why didn't they say, There's been a misprint. Thou shalt kill. Or thou shalt steal. Or thou shalt take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Why is it that there's something humorous about breaking the seventh commandment and yet all the other commandments are to be taken so seriously?

I think here's the problem. The pleasure and the excitement and the adrenaline rush of extramarital sex is so alluring that we don't consider the consequences. So it happens and marriages are damaged and children are abandoned and hearts are broken and self-images are shattered because somebody wanted to be satisfied by the power of the flesh.

To justify it we come up with all kinds of euphemisms. We call it an affair. God calls it adultery. We call it a blunder. God calls it blindness.

We call it a chance and God calls it a choice. We call it a defect. God calls it destruction. We call it an error.

God calls it enmity. We call it a fantasy. God calls it a fatality.

We call it a luxury. God calls it leprosy. We call it a mistake. God calls it madness.

We call it a trifle. God calls it a tragedy. We call it weakness and God calls it wickedness. But this particular sin, no matter what we call it, is a sin that reaches out and does so much harm and touches so many lies for the bad.

But the question is, how can it happen? Especially to a guy like David. David was a man after God's own heart. David was a man who loved the Lord, who studied the Word, who knew the Word, who even was inspired to write so many psalms that we have in the Scripture. He was a man who had given his life in service for the Lord. He loved the Lord that much and yet he gave in to this temptation and brought destruction on himself, on his family, on his nation, and brought reproach to the name of God. Could a saved man do such a thing?

My answer to that is absolutely yes. Folks, when God saved us, he didn't fix it so that we can't sin anymore. He just fixed it so that we can't sin and enjoy it anymore. And folks, David suffered the consequences for this sin for the entire rest of his life. Now before we move on to look at the anatomy of David's sin, I want us to be sure that we're not looking at it through the eye of a Pharisee. You remember back in Jesus' day, the Pharisees were very proud that they had not committed the act of adultery. Now they were judgmental and they were gossipers and they were covetous and they were extremely prideful. But they could say, we have not committed the act of adultery.

We have not had sex with someone else's wife. And so Jesus dealt with that in the Sermon on the Mount when he said this. He said, you've heard it said by them of old, thou shalt not commit adultery, but I say unto you, if you even look upon a woman as to lust after her, you've committed adultery already with her in your heart. So be careful not to be Pharisaical here. I think most of us could probably say, well I have not committed the act, the physical act of this sin, but I think most of us would also say, we have broken this commandment because we have committed this sin spiritually. And folks, whether it's physical or whether it's spiritual, it is an offense to the holiness of God. Now there are four points I want to share with you today as we look at this great passage as we look at the anatomy of David's sin.

Point one is this, there was a creeping carelessness. Look at verse one and the first part of verse two. In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel.

And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem. It happened late one afternoon when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house. Now I call this a creeping carelessness because it was like this thing just kind of slipped up on David.

Roger Ellsworth had some great wisdom here. He said this, We must not assume that this sequence began with David seeing the naked Bathsheba from the rooftop. It has to be traced back to his allowing a coldness and a casual attitude towards God to creep into his heart and settle there. Somewhere, the exact point is hidden from our prying eyes, David allowed the fire of devotion to God to burn low. Sin is always born in a damp, chilly heart. Omission usually precedes commission. Let a Christian become careless about his church attendance or let him become half-hearted when he is in church and he has already set one foot on the slippery slope of sin.

Let him become casual about his Bible reading or let him read mechanically and he has already hung the welcome sign out for sin. Let him leave off praying or pray without feeling and he has already planted the seeds of disaster. Now Scripture says here that it was the spring, the time when kings went out to battle. Winter time was not conducive to fighting. When there was snow and deep penetrating cold, when there was ice, when there was freezing rain, it was very difficult to do war. It's very difficult to go into a battle and oftentimes when they tried to do this in the winter, the soldiers would catch cold, some of them would get pneumonia and die. We see the same thing in modern day warfare.

I've talked to men who fought in Vietnam and they said during the monsoon seasons that the fighting oftentimes just would grind to a halt because of the torrential rains and the very high winds. Here in 2 Samuel chapter 11, what we see is that these generals from nations all over the Middle East, they would do their strategizing during the winter and then when the spring came, as soon as it came, man, they were ready to go and they were up and at it. They wanted to get ahead of everybody else.

So they would go as soon as that springtime hit. This had been David's strategy for years. But for some reason, this particular year, David decided not to go out himself and be the leader of his men in battle.

He decided to send his minister of war, whose name was Joab. Now why did David not go at this particular time? It could be that David was at a point where he had a whole bunch of new stuff and he just wanted to spend some time enjoying his stuff. He had been roughing it all of his life. He lived and slept out in the pastures and in caves and in tents. And now he's living in the most beautiful palace on the face of the earth. He's sleeping on a big feather bed. If they had cable television then, I'll guarantee you he was in his bed and he had the remote in his hands. Didn't even have to get out of bed to change the channel.

I'm being silly there. David has had every luxury and every modern convenience known to man. David was experiencing prosperity.

That prosperity led him to comfort and ease. So what am I saying? Am I saying that there's something wrong with being rich? There's something wrong with being wealthy? Am I saying that it's wrong for you to possess nice things?

No, I'm not. But I am saying that it's something wrong about nice things possessing you. When Jesus told the parable of the sower, he said the sower went out and he took the seed and he threw it out into the ground and some went on thorny ground. And when the seed began to grow up, the thorns wrapped itself around the seed and they choked it out and killed it. Jesus interpreted that parable. He said this is like men who hear the word of God and at first rejoice in it and hear it gladly.

But then the deceitfulness of riches and the cares of this world choke it out and kill it and the word is unfruitful. I saw a program not long ago about people that had won the lottery and some had won the Reader's Digest sweepstakes and all of a sudden they had all this money. And it was interesting to listen to their testimonies about what that money had done to them. In almost every case, they had had great, great problems. Families had been fractured. They had lost friends.

All this terrible stuff had happened to them and almost every single one of them said we were better off without the money than we were with it. As David's wealth and comfort increased, his spiritual carelessness increased right along with it. He had all the things that he needed. King Saul was no longer chasing him, trying to kill him because King Saul was dead. He had defeated most all of the enemies around him.

There were some that were out there, but they were not the big problem that they were at one time. And what had David done? David had lost his daily dependence on God. Folks, if you don't hear anything else I say today, I want you to hear how dangerous it is for us to lose our daily dependence on God. In Revelation chapter 2, Jesus is speaking to the seven churches in Asia Minor and He speaks first to the church at Ephesus. He says some very good things about this church, but He says, Nevertheless, I have this against you, that you have left your first love.

How do you lose your first love? By losing your daily dependence upon God. Verse 2 says that at evening time, David arose from his bed. What? He'd been sleeping all day long. I mean, everybody else is just coming home from work and David's just getting out of bed. So he gets out of bed and stretches a little bit and he walks out onto the roof of his house and he gets out there, starts walking around, getting a deep breath of fresh air, just wanting to check out the beauty of the city of Jerusalem and he's pretty excited about that and then all of a sudden there's a tinge of guilt in his heart.

All of his men are out there on the battlefield and he says, Well, I probably should be out there with them, but maybe I deserve this and it's time for me just to take a break. I think the important lesson here is the frog and the kettle syndrome. You know that story. They did an experiment. They took a frog and threw him into a kettle of boiling hot water and the frog immediately jumped out and saved his life.

But then they took that same frog, put him back into some warm water and he kind of huddled down in that water and then they started heating it up little by little and it wasn't long before he just stayed in there and the frog died in the boiling water. So it was with David. This horrible event in David's life could never have happened if this had taken place right after the capture of Jerusalem. Because right after that, what did David do? David brought the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem. He placed it in the tabernacle of David.

You remember what David did as they were bringing it in? David danced before the Lord. He was so filled with the joy of God that he couldn't help but worship.

He studied. He worshiped. He just fell in love with the Lord. He was serving others. He was serving God. His mind was disciplined on the things of the Lord and it was in that time that it happened. After months of comfort and ease, he became complacent, like the frog and the kettle.

And it was in the context of complacency when the temptation struck. Alright, point two, a carnal curiosity. Look at the second part of verse two with me. He saw from the roof a woman bathed into the woman was very beautiful.

David walks out on the roof of his house and he's looking out over the city. There's a building right beside him where it's a little bit lower than his palace and he looks out on the roof of that palace and there's the most beautiful woman that he's ever seen. And she is bathing herself.

Let me tell you something. I have to question Bathsheba's discretion at this point in time. And even if she is totally innocent of what she's doing, this is not very wise. For she is opening herself up to be an object of lust.

She is opening herself up for men to look at her from somewhere and see her without any clothing. Roger Ellsworth said this, The focus of the passage is, of course, on David, but Bathsheba was not blameless. It is very likely that she knew her bathing could be seen from the king's palace. Perhaps she even wanted it that way. We can say for certain that she should have rejected David's advances. The same law of God that applied to David applied to her. It would, of course, have been very difficult for her to refuse the king of her nation. But God does not require obedience only if it is easy.

He requires it no matter what the cost. Ladies, in the society that we are living in where promiscuity is rampant and very much accepted, it doesn't take too much to encourage a man. A short skirt, a lingering look from you, a tender smile, a touch that might be totally innocent on your part might be seen from some man as an invitation for him to approach you. I've heard so many women say, Don't tell me what to wear. If you've got a problem lusting after me because of what I wear, then that's your problem.

That's not my problem. Well, folks, it might be that man's problem, but I want you to know that if you as a lady are causing someone else to lust because of your immodest dress, then you'll stand before God and give an account for that. Now, if David had been wise, he would immediately have turned around and gone back into the palace because when he took that first look, that was not sin. That was the temptation, but it was not sin. The Scripture tells us that Jesus was tempted in all points even as we are, but yet was without sin. So the problem is not the temptation.

The problem is the yielding to the temptation. Billy Graham used to say, It's not the first look that's the sin. It's the second look.

And I remember I was teaching in a high school class before I went in the ministry and I shared that with them. It's not the first look that's the sin. It's the second look. And one young man stepped up and said, Well, can we take a long first look? And I said, No, that's sin too.

Well, what so all fired bad about a look? The problem is that our minds are like computers. What goes into the mind stays in the mind. I was counseling a 40-year-old man who was addicted to pornography several years ago. He told me how it all got started. He said that a friend of his had gone and stolen a pornographic magazine out of a drug store, told several of his buddies about it, including this young man who's in the third grade now. And so they went over into the woods to check it out.

They got over to the woods, they opened it up, and said all the guys were standing around just absolutely gawking at that magazine. And he said, Doug, he said, That picture of that lady, it was just indelibly implanted in my mind. And he said, You know, I can't remember the color of my notebook that year. He said, I can't remember the color of my spelling book. He said, I can't even remember the color of my third grade teacher's hair. He said, I remember just with great detail the color of that woman's lipstick.

He said, I could not get the picture of that woman out of my mind. Folks, here's the progression. You sow a thought, you reap an action. You sow an action, you reap a habit. You sow a habit, you reap a lifestyle. You sow a lifestyle, you reap a character. And you sow a character, you reap a destiny.

What we euphemistically call curiosity, God calls lust. And the time to deal with it is in the beginning. To try to keep it from just gravitating in your mind, you must deal with it immediately when it comes. To win the spiritual battle, deal with the temptation quickly.

Some psychologists have said that if we fantasize about something or think deeply about something on three different occasions, that in our mind it's just as real as if it actually happened. We need to remember what the apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 10, verses 3 through 6. For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but are mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations in every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ, and having a readiness to revenge all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.

In Romans 16, verse 19, Paul gives us a little insight into how to have victory in the area of our thought life. And he says this, he said, I would have you to be wise unto that which is good, and simple unto that which is evil. Now the flesh tells you to do the exact opposite. The flesh tells you that what you need to do is you need to learn as much as possible about sin in order that you won't fall into it, in order that you'll know how to deal with it.

That's a lie. For the more you study sin, the more you subject yourself to sin, the more calloused you become to it. And it gets to the point where it just doesn't bother you.

Let me tell you something. God doesn't want you at the point where sin doesn't bother you. God wants your conscience to be sensitive, sensitive to that sin so the flesh cries out for something more. The flesh cannot be satisfied. In 1 Corinthians, chapter 6, verse 18, Paul said, Flee from sexual immorality because it's different than all other sin because it's a sin against the body. What does that mean?

It means that it causes the body to crave satisfaction from things that are outside of God's will. The man who I mentioned a while ago that was addicted to pornography, 40-year-old man, he shared with me that he spent between $100 to $200 a month on movies and magazines. And I said, well, why wasn't one magazine enough? Why wasn't one movie or video enough? And he said, oh, that's not the way it works. And he shared with me that his pornography was an addiction. And he said that once he got into one movie, he had to see another. And it needed to be stronger than that. It needed to be more perverted than that in order that he might get the thrill that he needed. I tell you, I'm sick to death of people telling me that these raunchy movies out there should not really offend us.

Let me tell you something, that's a lie. This nation is more calloused, it's more hardened to the gospel, it's more spiritually blind, it's more cynical, it's more perverted than we've ever been. And what is the problem? I believe the great problem is what we allow into our eye-gate through the internet, through movies, and through TV. Proverbs 23 verse 7 says, As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. The question pops up, well, if I don't study evil things, then how will I know what to stay away from? What did Paul say? I would have you to be wise unto that which is good.

I've shared this illustration with you before, but I love this illustration. The FBI, when they're teaching men how to detect counterfeit money, they won't let them look at counterfeit money at all for the first six months. For the first six months, they do nothing but study the real money.

They study the texture of the paper, they study the print, they study the writing, they study the color, they study everything about that money until finally they've got it so ingrained in their mind what real money is like, that when they introduce a counterfeit bill, it just pops up, man, wow, that's it, that's counterfeit, and they know it immediately because they're so well understood in what real money's like. So it is with the Word of God. That's why we are to saturate our heart with God's Word. Saturate our heart with God's Word so that we'll know it so well that when a temptation pops up, then immediately it's like the Holy Spirit sends a red flag up. And those verses that we've been studying come up immediately to deal with that particular sin. Stay away from it!

Stay away from it! And it almost screams at us. And that way we don't have to get the filth into our minds.

Alright, that takes us to the third point, a covetous consumption. Look to me at verse 3. And David sent and inquired about the woman, and one said, Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliim, the wife of Uriah the Hittite? David inquired about the woman, and the servant said, Well, this is Bathsheba. She is the wife of Uriah the Hittite. Who is Uriah the Hittite? Uriah the Hittite was one of David's mighty men of valor. The mighty men of valor was a small group of soldiers who had pretty much the caliber of our green berets today.

These were guys who were fighters. And they were men who were absolutely loyal to Israel, and they were loyal to Israel's king. Uriah was one of the most loyal soldiers that David had. He was a man who loved David, who loved Israel. He would have died for David in a heartbeat. And the one quality that I think David admired in men as much as anything else was the quality of loyalty. Uriah was a loyal, dedicated, totally committed soldier to David. David should have been overwhelmed by Uriah's loyalty. But his lust for Bathsheba has stripped him of any common sense. No longer is he thinking about Uriah's loyalty. No longer is he thinking about what's right and what's wrong. No longer is he thinking about the seventh commandment, Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Why? Because Bathsheba's a knockout. She's absolutely gorgeous. And all that consumes him right now is him having an encounter with her. His heart's burning with lust, and in the heat of that kind of passion, all of a sudden nothing else matters. His wife, Abigail, is in that same palace. He doesn't care how she feels. His children are there. He's supposed to be an example to his children. He doesn't care.

Uriah, the Hittite, was one of his very most loyal soldiers. And what is he doing? He's stealing his wife. David doesn't care about his testimony. He doesn't care that he's breaking God's law. And he doesn't care that he's breaking God's heart. That's what's hard to understand.

I tell you, I'm amazed when I talk to people who are in the midst of an adulterous affair. And what amazes me most is the callousness. They don't care about people. They don't care about their spouse. They don't care about the children. And they don't care about God. It just doesn't matter. Folks, it's a covetous consumption. And it might sound funny when it's coming from the lips as a joke from the cast on MASH.

Or it might sound funny when it's a bunch of guys at work that are talking about their sordid affairs that they've had. Let me tell you when it happens to you. When it happens to you and your family's ripped apart and your children's hearts are crushed and you personally feel absolutely torn up on the inside then you understand why God said to the world, there are ten things that you must not do. And one of them is you must not commit adultery. David did. His carelessness led to curiosity. His curiosity led to consumption. And his consumption led to a calamitous choice.

That's my fourth point. Look at verse 4. So David sent messengers and took her. And she came to him and he lay with her.

As she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness then she returned to her house. If David had been out in the field with the men where he should have been then this wouldn't have happened. If Bathsheba had not been out on the roof then this would not have happened.

But it did happen because David did not stop the avalanche. And one of the things that Satan uses most in our lives is this lie. And it's this. You've already gone this far so you may as well just finish it out. You ever heard that lie in your mind? The thought of doing this is sin so if you've already thought it you may as well just go ahead and commit the act. What a horrible and deceitful lie. Folks, it is sinful for us to allow your mind to fantasize but that is never justification to take the sin further. It is not justification.

It is always best to stop before you hurt yourself more and before you harm others more. E.V. Hill, great Baptist pastor out of Watts, California I heard him preach a sermon on the prodigal son years ago entitled it, The Hog Pen Trail. And his story was about the downward journey that the prodigal son made as he went down to the pig pen. He started and said, spoke of the prodigal son back at home with his dad and how in his mind he was fantasizing about what the far country would be like with its prostitutes and its liquor and all the fun. And then he talked about the rebellion of the son who came to his daddy and demanded his inheritance. And then he talked about his son going to the far country and he goes to the far country and he meets all these ungodly friends. And then he talks about all the filth and the depravity that goes on in the far country. And then he talks about his poverty. How he lost everything that he had. And looking for a job and the only one who would give him a job was a pig farmer. Then he talks about the pig pen. How he went down into the pig pen and he was so hungry that he was scuffling and wrestling with the pigs trying to get enough food to fill his hungry belly. And then E.V. Hill made a very astute observation. He said, you know, that prodigal son could have stopped and gone back home at any point in that downward trail to the pig pen. He could have stopped anywhere along there and said, this is it. I'm not going any further. This is wrong before God.

This is what I need to do. I'm going back home. So it was for David and so it is for us. Maybe you're in a situation right now where there's somebody at work of the opposite sex and they are letting you know maybe in very subtle comments that they're available to you. That doesn't have to continue.

That needs to stop right now. It may be in other areas of your life. It may be with experiment with drugs.

It may be with unethical business practices. But I like the way E.V. Hill said it.

He said, you don't have to go all the way down. Turn to Christ, Christians. Realize that you're on a battleground and not a playground. Realize that what God has called you to is to experience radical joy in Him. For the joy of the Lord is our strength.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, it seems that lately we have seen many of our spiritual heroes experience similar failures to that of David. Temptations have not lost power over 3,000 years. In 1 Corinthians 10, 13, you said, For no temptation has taken you, but such is as common to man. But God is faithful, and He will not permit you to be tempted above that which you are able.

But will with the temptation provide a way of escape that you may be able to bear it. You also said, Let him who thinks he stands take heed, lest he fall. Lord, help us to take those words to heart.

To fight spiritual laziness and complacency. If this kind of failure can happen to David, it can happen to us. Father, please break spiritual pride in us. And may we stay humble before a holy God. We love you, Lord. Thank you for loving us. For it is in Jesus' precious and holy name that we pray. Amen.