The Cover-Up

God's Word is very clear regarding how God expects us to deal with our sin. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven and whose sins have been covered.

By the way, that's a wonderful Old Testament truth. Don't ever expect God to cover over for you what you will not uncover for Him. In other words, when you uncover your sin, He covers it. When you cover it up, the sin that you refuse to confess is sin that He won't cover. What comes to your mind when I say these two words, cover up? Maybe you think of a political scandal that people tried to keep from becoming public. You certainly think of someone trying to hide something. But let's be honest with ourselves, because isn't that what we're all tempted to do with our sin? We want to keep it hidden, private, and under wraps. Today on Wisdom for the Heart, Stephen Davey is taking us to Romans 4. We're going to hear of some men who tried to cover up their sin and the results of those efforts.

More importantly, we'll learn what we should do when we sin. Our attention as a nation has been riveted to one exposure after another of prominent people and prominent corporations gone bad. Above all, incredible stories are emerging of complex and rather detailed cover-ups. One recent story revolves around a fairly well-known woman who apparently sold her shares of stock in a company just before the company's financial woes hit the press and the stock plummeted. A few days ago, she finally relented under legal pressure to comply by turning over her phone records and email, which would have revealed that she had or had not received phone calls or placed phone calls to high-ranking officials in this company and gotten what we call insider information.

When she turned it over, the officials discovered that certain phone numbers and emails had been blacked out. Frankly, if you pick up the newspaper and you just read, it seems that perhaps our national pastime is cover-up. So rampant is the infidelity and deception of married men and women toward their spouses and children that a company called the Alibi Agency that I learned of a few days ago makes a profit from helping create an alibi for their clients. Atlantic Monthly reported that this company will furnish you with the ticket stubs for the theater performance you said you were going to. They will print up fake invitations and programs to the social and business events that supposedly kept you away from home. And their advertising proudly promises, we can tailor make an alibi to your specifications. Our aim is your peace of mind.

It really does exist. Part of the cover-up strategy is to deny, deny, deny, deny. And then when you're finally caught, admit to some lesser thing or admit to simply having made some sort of mistake. But if caught, the average man or the average woman on the street would say, well, I guess you're right. I guess I made a poor choice.

I guess I made a mistake. Nothing to say of sin or deception or lying. Another aspect of the cover-up strategy is to deny, deny, and deny until proven wrong and then blame somebody else as being the bad person. This strategy, of course, goes all the way back to the first man and the first woman who ever walked the face of the earth when God came, of course, after Adam and Eve sinned and began to cover up by these fig leaves trying to hide their nakedness. You remember God came to hold them accountable and uncover their true sin.

And we have the first record of an excuse or a blame given. Adam said, the woman that you gave me, it was her fault. The tragedy, though, wasn't so much that Adam blamed his wife, although that was tragic. The deeper tragedy was that Adam implied that God was ultimately to blame. The woman that you gave to be with me gave me to Eve. The Lord looked at Eve in effect and said, OK, are you going to admit you're a sinner? And she blamed it on whom?

The serpent, which ultimately then blames it on God because God created the serpent and God created Satan who inhabited the serpent. We would never blame God for our sin, would we? Have you ever said, OK, Lord, you know, that's the way you made me. And if you hadn't made me that way, I wouldn't respond that way. Isn't that blame? Lord, if you had taken care of those issues in a timely fashion, I wouldn't have had to take those matters into my own hands and see what I've gotten myself into.

But ultimately, you didn't come through. That's really another way of saying, Lord, it's your fault. Deny, deny, deny, then blame someone else. Cal Thomas wrote in World magazine these provocative words. He says, isn't anyone responsible for anything anymore?

Apparently not. We're all victims now and anything bad is somebody else's fault. And then he goes on to cite several pending cases, including the man who was ordered to cut down a diseased tree in his yard since it posed a hazard to power lines and traffic.

So the man backed his van up, put a ladder on the roof of his van and began to chop the tree down. And when the ladder, of course, slipped off the van, he then in turn sued the city. It was their fault. The case reminded me of one I read several years ago about a high school girl who tried out for the varsity football team. She was allowed to try out. In fact, school officials were afraid that if they didn't let her, they could be sued for discrimination. So she was allowed to play. And in the first scrimmage, she was hurt. So she sued the city for more than a million dollars. And along with her parents claimed in the lawsuit that, quote, nobody had warned her of the physical dangers inherent in the sport.

She didn't know you could get hurt playing football. Perhaps the most incredible story I've read in a while was the story of the 56-year-old man in New York who's in the process of suing several fast food chains for contributing to his weight gain, which led to his heart attack. He claims that the fast food restaurants created an addiction, a craving that overpowered him. I can identify to some degree, but he took it a lot further. So he is suing McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, and Kentucky Fried Chicken for causing his heart attack by all that bad food.

By the way, never mind that all four of those fast food chains offer salad. But he was addicted to the bacon and Swiss double whopper and the Biggie fries and, you know, the magnificent Mountain Dew. But it wasn't his fault. So deny, deny, deny. And then when something happens, it's somebody else's fault. Another way of covering up sin is something we hear more than ever. It's the person who was caught in a crime who says, yes, I did something bad, but I'm not a bad person.

The Chicago Tribune a few months ago reported how a disgruntled former employee walked into a restaurant in Elgin, Illinois with four guns and opened fire. He killed two and wounded 16 others. At his trial, he remained unrepentant and defensive when his attorney on the stand asked him if he felt any remorse, hoping to mitigate perhaps a harsher sentence. The man said, as ironic as this sounds, I'm a passionate giving person. I like to think I'm a pretty good person and I'm not one to hurt anyone that doesn't provoke me. In other words, I was provoked. It was somebody else's fault. And I'm really not evil because I'm really a good, passionate, giving person.

Forget that he wounded and maimed people he didn't even know, people who didn't provoke him. I did something evil, but I'm really not an evil person. There's a fourth way to cover up sinful behavior.

It's becoming, I believe, the most popular of all. Whenever you're caught in sin, simply say it isn't sinful. Deny, deny, deny.

Then when you're caught, say, well, it really isn't bad at all. In fact, you don't even deny it. You applaud it. You endorse it. You approve of it.

You say it's the way to live and it's the way I want to live. And you wear it as a badge of honor. The classic example is the homosexual community who holds their annual gay pride parades and their gay pride month. Pride. Sexual perversion of men with men and women with women is not sinful. It is a reason to be proud. This method of covering sin redefines more right and wrong.

Basically, it's attempting to overcome the guilt of sin and the pain of a guilty conscience. Judith Brant recently wrote a book subtitled, if you can believe it, Your Guide to Infidelity and Extramarital Etiquette. And of course, she got rave reviews.

I read some of them. She said in one interview, if you're going about your business in a discreet way, in other words, if nobody catches you in your infidelity, and you are continuing to take care of your wife and children, in other words, if you put food on the table and clothing on their back and a roof over their head, then there is no reason to feel guilty. In other words, you haven't done anything wrong. You can be a discreet fornicator now. You can use proper etiquette while you destroy somebody else's life along with yours, along with the families involved. She went on to actually state in an interview that adultery can actually provide short-term benefits.

Let's not mention the long-term issue. Paul has already described that sort of thinking in Romans chapter 1, the atrocity of this kind of cover-up that he says is really the worst kind of all. He says in effect that the gutter of depravity, the bottom of the sewer of sin, is when a person or a society at large not only commits sinful acts, but approves of that sin, endorses that sin, and applauds that evil behavior on others.

He writes in chapter 1 verse 32, they not only do the same as he listed in those sentences, but they also give hearty approval to those who practice them, redefining it so that it is no longer evil, but it is good. I want you to listen to what Herbert Hoover said in the 1930s, our 31st president. He warned the future generations in these words. He says, the strength of our nation lies in public sensitivity to evil. Our greatest danger is not some invading army. Our greatest danger is a public tolerance of scandalous behavior.

He spoke prophetically. In other words, the greatest danger facing anybody in any culture is the cover-up of sin. Covering up sin by saying, well, it was just a bad choice. Covering up sin by blaming it on someone else. Covering up evil by saying, well, you're really not an evil person.

And worst of all, covering up sin by saying it really isn't sin. Now in an attempt to show the depravity of the human heart and the depravity of the human mind to reveal that without a doubt salvation has to be, it just has to be the free gift of God independently of who we are because we are ultimately depraved. What Paul has been doing in chapter 4 of Romans is bringing to the mind of especially the Jewish reader, the illustration of Abraham. He was the great patriarch of all time. He was a former pagan whom God revealed himself to without any invitation.

God taking all of the initiative and he took him out of his idolatrous country and he called him to leave and gave him promises of a new race and a new people. And all along the way, Abraham had a terrible time lying. And so of course the issue was that Abraham was saved or justified not by his life.

Just look at his life. What does the scripture say? If Abraham was the beloved patriarch, David was the beloved monarch. And that's the next illustration in Romans chapter 4.

King David was a master, ladies and gentlemen, in the game of cover up. He was a great king and he was a great sinner. For that reason, Paul will use, I believe, David as an illustration along with Abraham that God justifies a man or a woman apart from works.

Because if you look carefully enough at any human being, you see depravity and sinfulness and evil. Notice what he writes in chapter 4 verse 6. Just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works. In other words, the life of David was sinful at times. So then it ought to be obvious that God justified David independently of his life, his works. But the Bible is rather unrelenting at times in its exposure of sin. In order for us to appreciate the words of David quoted centuries later here in Romans chapter 4, we need to go back to that time when perhaps you find the most famous cover up in biblical history. So would you take your Bibles and let's go to 2 Samuel chapter 11 and verse 1. Then it happened in the spring at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel.

And they destroyed the sons of Ammon and besieged or literally surrounded the city of Rabbah. But David stayed in Jerusalem, verse 2. Now, when evening came, David arose from his bed and walked around on the roof of the king's house. And from the roof, he saw a woman bathing. And the woman was very beautiful in appearance. So David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah, the Hittite? God is making sure that the servant informs David that this woman is a married woman. And that should have stopped David in his tracks. Verse 4, almost without pause, David sent messengers and took her. And when she came to him, he lay with her. And when she had purified herself from her uncleanness, she returned to her house.

One night here, it's over. The Bible doesn't inform us about this meeting between David and Bathsheba. We're not told whether or not this was a meeting that digressed quickly into some sort of kingly coercion or maybe some form of intimidation or maybe bribery or maybe even cruel rape. It simply says she came and he sent her home. Implying that David now wants life to sort of resume as normal.

But not so fast. Look at verse 5. And the woman conceived and she sent and told David and said, I am pregnant. Now at this point, David has a choice. He can confess his sin and do whatever necessary to accept the consequences of his sin. Or he can try to cover it up. And he chooses, of course, the cover up. There are several steps in his cover up. Step number one, if you're familiar with the story, was to bring Bathsheba's husband home from the battlefield.

Make sure that he's there to spend at least a weekend with his wife so that her pregnancy could be attributed to him instead of to somebody else. So verse 6, David sent to Joab, who was the general, saying, send me Uriah to Hittite. So Joab sent Uriah to David. When Uriah came to him, David asked concerning the welfare of Joab and the people and the state of the war.

In other words, it's all this little small talk. Then David said to Uriah, go down to your house and wash your feet. It's an Old Testament way of saying go home and take the weekend off and relax. Uriah went out of the king's house and a present from the king was sent out after him. But Uriah slept at the door of the king's house and with all the servants of his lord and did not go down to his house. Verse 10, now when they told David, saying, Uriah did not go down to his house, David said to Uriah, have you not come from a journey?

Why did you not go down to your house? Verse 11, Uriah said to David, the ark and Israel and Judah are staying in temporary shelters and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field. Shall I then go to my house to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife? By your life and the life of your servant I will not do this thing. So David moves to step two, verse 13. Now David called him and he ate and drank before him and he made him drunk. And in the evening he went out to lie on his bed with the lord's servants, but he still, that is, did not go down to his house. You can just almost begin to feel the panic rising in David's heart. The man just won't go home, a loyal soldier, hardened by battle, unwilling to take time off while his comrades are facing life-threatening conditions and difficult conditions and he just won't go home.

And that's a problem. He hasn't been home for months. He's been out on the field according to the chronology of Scripture and it'll be months before the soldiers come back. So if David can't get him home, it's going to be obvious that it was somebody else and by now it's going to be pretty obvious that it was David because David was the one that kept wanting him to go home. By the way, at this point it's clear that David and Bathsheba are now together in this scheme.

They are now together in this cover-up. Instead of telling her husband what David did and what she did, instead of telling the truth, she's now in the process of deceiving her husband. So the third step is to make sure Uriah never comes home. Look at verse 14. It came about in the morning that David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. And he had written in the letter saying, Place Uriah in the front line of the fiercest battle and withdraw from him so that he may be struck down and die. Skip to verse 17.

And the men of the city went out and fought against Joab and some of the people among David's servants fell and Uriah the Hittite also died, ultimately killed as a result of David's attempt to cover up sin. I want to give you a principle here. Covering up sin instead of confessing sin multiplies the devastation once it is uncovered. The devastation that occurs in the life of a husband who didn't know, in the heart of a wife which is ripped to pieces upon discovering her husband's secret life, children who place their trust in a father or a mother, their trust is smashed to pieces. A magazine is uncovered or found.

A phone number is found. And lives are literally ripped apart. Let's call it what it is. It is sin. It isn't a bad choice, although it is. But it's more than that. It's sin. It isn't a mistake. It's sin.

Anything that is an affront to the holiness of God and all the commands that we have been given. The author wrote a story. It's a story of a couple who had been married for 25 years. They had three older children who loved them dearly.

They were blessed with financial resources. They began dreaming about a lakeside retirement home. Began putting into place purchasing one. They narrowed their search and went to look at one.

A widow was selling his lakefront home. They liked it. They returned home to plan and to think. Months later, out of the blue, this mother and this wife announced to her husband she wanted a divorce. He went numb and then angry and said, How could you be conceiving this plan here for 25 years?

We're in this stage of our life and looking for a retirement home. How can you be nursing this plan? Well, she said that she hadn't really been nursing it for that long. She said it was a recent decision and he asked, Who? She said it was the owner of the lakefront home. She said to her husband that she was now in love with this man and she was not going to turn back.

Not even her grown children who hated the idea could dissuade her. This man writes, The day came for her to leave and the husband was walking through the kitchen on the way to the garage. He stopped and he looked at her and he said, I guess this is the last time. She erased from her mind the feelings of guilt and the awkwardness of that.

She hurriedly gathered her things and she drove north to meet this man. Two weeks after moving in with him, he was seized with a heart attack. He lingered for a few hours and then he died.

Now she was alone. In two weeks, so much of their lives was irretrievably destroyed. Lost, destroyed.

The future, bleak. That's one of those stories where you hear the end of it while you're still alive. David, by the way, isn't through with his cover up. He takes it another step in deception and hypocrisy. His fourth step is in verse 27, when the time of mourning was over. That is, when they finally finished the funeral for these faithful soldiers, including Uriah. David sent and brought Bathsheba to his house and she became his wife.

See, we still got to cover up the fact that she's with child. And so you can imagine David perhaps at the memorial service, maybe he's the one delivering the eulogy, what hypocrisy. But it seems like David is going to get away with murder, that God has somehow now overlooked it as some cynic perhaps in the palace who knows the real story, says, well, David is God's favorite and he'll get away with it.

You see, he won't. In fact, if you look at the latter part of verse 27, with a little insertion, but the thing that David had done was evil in the sight of the Lord. I'm not sure how secret this secret was. There's a year between chapter 11 and chapter 12. But during that year, I'll just summarize, there's a prophet named Nathan who's been thinking of a way to approach David. So he finally comes and he tells David, you remember the story. He says, David, there was this little poor man and his family, they had one little lamb. They treated the lamb like a pet.

It ate scraps from the table and it was the playmate of the children. Nearby was the wealthy landowner. The implication was this poor man worked as a tenant farmer for him and he had many lambs. One day some company came to the rich man's home and he wanted to roast a lamb and he didn't want to take one of his many. So he went and seized the lamb of this poor man. He killed it and served it to the guests. And at that point in the story, David virtually comes off his throne and he says, that man must die. Now, wait a second.

According to the law, you only have to make restoration in a case like that. See how the hypocrisy of David has exceeded rational limits. He says, that man's got to die. Nathan probably let that echo around the halls of the palace before he then looked at him and said, David, you are that man. As I try to picture it, I can imagine David slumping back onto his throne, now exposed.

The cover up is uncovered. You see, my friends, Paul will use David as an illustration because David's case is hopeless. Do you understand?

It's hopeless. He is guilty of murder. He is guilty of lying.

He is guilty of coveting. He has broken so many commandments. There is no way that God would ever allow him into paradise.

That's the reason Paul will use him. He will become one of God's greatest evidences that salvation is a free gift. It isn't given to perfect people. It's given to terrible sinners. Listen to what David says life was like during those days of covering up his sin. Listen to what David says about what life was like when he was deceiving others. He writes, when I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through all my groaning all day long.

In other words, he's absolutely miserable. For day and night, he writes, your hand was heavy upon me. My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer.

He had no energy, no reason to live. But then, of course inserted in that then is the coming of Nathan and the blessing of accountability. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and my iniquity I did not hide. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the guilt of my sin. And in Romans chapter 4 verse 7, Paul will pull from this psalm David's opening stanza. Paul quoting David writes in Romans chapter 4 verse 7. That opening phrase of the song once David has stopped the cover up and he has confessed his sin. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven and whose sins have been covered.

By the way, that's a wonderful Old Testament truth. Don't ever expect God to cover over for you what you will not uncover for him. In other words, when you uncover your sin, he covers it. When you cover it up, the sin that you refuse to confess is sin that he won't cover. In fact, those who cherish sin, embrace sin, refuse to repent, are proof that they do not belong to the one who is the redeemer and forgiver of sin. And then he says, blessed is the man in verse 8 whose sin the Lord will not take into account.

No more covering. Instead, just the joy of full confession, the liberation that comes. Yes, the pain of exposure, but all the great joy, the clear conscience. That would be David's testimony. That was God's wisdom for your heart today. Is there something you're trying to keep hidden, even from God?

Run to him in honesty and in full confession and find the forgiveness your soul craves. You've been listening to this for more than a year. You've been listening to this for more than a year.

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