Sin's Deception

Revolves with you today. Turn with me if you would to second Samuel chapter 11 will be. Look at verses 134 in the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle David sent Joab and his servants withing and all Israel. They ravage the ammonites of the sea drama but David remained in Jerusalem happened late one afternoon when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house that he saw from the roof.

A woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful and David sent inquired about the woman and one said is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of a lion, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. So David sent messengers and took her. She came to him and he lay with her and she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness. Then she returned to her house bell with me as we go to our Lord in prayer. Heavenly father we been studying the life of David for almost a year. We send great spiritual and physical victories we sing, trial and tribulation. We sing emotional highs and emotional lows. Today we see a moral failure is almost hard to believe David is a man of your own heart is the apple of your eye. He rode over half the songs 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 and is thought life. He became spiritually careless in the enemy attacks and inmate defeated David. We know that David repented and you for gave them, 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 see and convict us and challenge us to a deeper hole.

Your walk with you.

Help me to preach today is a dying man to dine people 40 is in the precious holy name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.

You may be seated.

Several years ago I was watching the episode of the TV show mash, and on this particular show the priest father Mulcahy came running up the Col. Potter so we got a terrible problem and Col. Potter said will padre what is it and he said we just got in a new shipment of Bibles. There's been a misprint and he took the Bible. He ended up Exodus chapter 20, he said, listen to what they did of the seventh commandment. And he read these words. Thou shalt commit adultery and everybody laughed, and the Col. said to them, don't worry about it padre just seeing that shipment of Bibles back, it'll be okay. The pottery breathe a sigh of relief. After that I had to think about what was done they are in and why they did it the way they did it. Why is it that they used the Sabbath commandment to make a joke.

Why did they use another commandment. Why didn't they say there's been a misprint.

Thou shalt keel 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 all the other commandments are to be taken so seriously. I think here's the problem. The pleasure in the excitement in 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 justify we come up with all kinds of euphemisms we call it an affair God because of the adultery we call it a blunder God calls it blindness. We call it a chill chance and God calls it a choice. We we call it a defect, God calls it destruction we call the era. God calls it enmity. We call it a fantasy. God calls 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 because of the tragedy we call it weakness in God calls it wickedness with this particular CM no matter what we call it is a 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 love 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'd given his life in service for the Lord. He loved the Lord that much and yet he gave into this temptation and brought destruction on himself on his own. His family on his nation and brought reproach to the name of God to save man do such a thing.

My answer that is absolutely yes but when God saved us. He didn't fix it so that we can see in anymore he just fixed it so that we can see and enjoy it anymore and folks David suffered the consequences of this sin the entire rest of his life never fully look on move on to look at the anatomy of David sin.

I want us to be sure that were not looking at it through the high 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 and they were covered Justin and they were extremely prideful they could say we have not committed the act of adultery. We have not had sex with someone else's wife is a Jesus dealt with that in the sermon on the mount when he said this, he said, you 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 committed adultery already with her in your heart, so be careful not to be pharisaical here at Sutton. I think most of us could probably say why not committed the act, the physical act of the sin, but I think most of us would also say we have broken this commandment because we have committed the sin spiritually and folks whether it's physical or whether it spiritual is an offense to the holiness of God. Now the four points I want to share with you today. As we look at this great passage as we look at the anatomy of David sin .1 is the is there was a creeping carelessness.

Look in the first one in 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 them and all Israel, and they ravaged ammonites embassy drama but David remained in Jerusalem.

It happened late one afternoon when David arose from his couch was walking on the roof of the king's house.

I call this a creeping carelessness because it was like this thing just kind of slipped up on David Roger Ellsworth has some great wisdom here. He said this, we must not assume that this sequence began with David. See in the naked Bathsheba from the rooftop has to be traced back to his allowing a coldness and a casual attitude towards God to creep into his heart and settle layer somewhere. The exact point is hidden from prying eyes. David allow the fire devotion to God to burn, load sin is always born in a damp chili heart omission usually precedes commission let a Christian become careless about his church attendance or letting become halfhearted when he is in church and he is already set 1 foot on the slippery slope of sin, let him become casual about his Bible reading or letting read mechanically and he's already hung the welcome sign out for sin.

Letting leave off, praying, or pray without feeling and he's already planted the seeds of disaster that Scripture says here that it was the spring the time when kings went out to battle wintertime is not conducive to finding when there was snow and deep penetrating cold there was ice when there was freezing rain is very difficult to do war. It's very difficult to go into a battle and often times when they tried to do this in the winter.

The soldiers would go attach call some of them would get pneumonia and die. We see the same thing and in modern day warfare talk to me and he fought in Vietnam and they said during the monsoon season's that the defining oftentimes just would grind to a halt because of the torrential rains in the in the very high winds here in second Samuel chapter 11 we see is that these generals from nations all over the, the Middle East, that they would do their strategizing during the winter and then when the spring came as soon as it came. And they were ready to go and they were up and added they wanted to get ahead of everybody else. So they would go as soon as that springtime hit. This had been David strategy for years, but for some reason this particular year, David decided not to go out himself be the leader of his men in battle he decided to send his minister of war.

His name was Joab know why did David not go with this particular time could be that David was at a point where he had a whole bunch of 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 pastors and in caves and intents and now he's living in the most beautiful palace on the face of the earth he sleep in on a big featherbed if they had cable-television then I'll guarantee he was in his bed in his bed and he had the remote in his hands.

Then you have to get out of bed to change the channel be in silly layer, but 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 say in my essay and that there something wrong with being rich.

There something wrong with being wealthy by saying that it's wrong for you to possess nice things know I'm not but I am saying that it's something wrong about nice things possessing you. When Jesus told a parable. The story said the store went out and he took the CV threw it out into the ground and some went on thorny ground and when the sea begin to grow up.

The thorns wrapped itself around of the seed and they checked 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 hearing gladly. But the end, 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 that 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. It was interesting to listen to their to to their testimonies about what that money had done to them in almost every case, they had had great great problems of families had been fractured. They lost friends all this terrible stuff and happen to them in almost every single one of them said we were better off without the money than we were with it is 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 it because King Saul was dead. Defeated most all of the enemies around him. There were some that were out there, but they were not that big problem that they were at one time, and what he David done.

David had lost his his daily dependence on God.

But 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 the seven churches, and in Asia minor and he speaks first. The church in Ephesus. He says some very good things about this church when he says nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love how you lose your first love by losing your daily dependence upon God. Verse two says that it evening time.

David arose from his bed. What he been sleeping all day long. I'm everybody else is just coming home from work and Dave is just get out of bed so he gets out of bed and stretches a little bit. He walks out onto the roof of his house and he gets out there start walking around get enough a deep breath of fresh air. Just want to check out the beauty of the city of Jerusalem and he's pretty excited about that and all of a sudden there's a tinge of guilt in his heart, all of his men wrapped there on the battlefield. He says well I probably should be out there with them, but maybe I deserve the essence.

Time for me just to take a break. I think the important lesson. Here's the frog in the kettle syndrome you know that story they did an experiment.

I took a frog three mentor of kettle of boiling hot water in the frog immediately jumped out to save his life within. They took that same frog putting back into some warm water and he kinda huddled down in that water and then I started heating it up little by little and it wasn't long before he just stayed in their and the frog died in the bull and 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. 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 in the tabernacle of David even 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 and his mind was discipline on the things of the Lord and it was in that time that it happened after months of comfort in these, he became complacent like the frog in the kettle and it was in the context of complacency when the temptation struck High Point to a carnal curiosity. Look at the second part of verse two with me. He saw from the roof. A woman bathing.

The woman was very beautiful. David walks out the roof of his house and looking out over the city. There's a building right beside him with its little bit lower than in his his palace and he looks at on the roof of that palace and there's the most beautiful woman that he is ever seen and she is bathing herself only tell you something I have to question Bathsheba's discretion. At this point in time and even if she is totally innocent. 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 me on to look at her first 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 even wanted it that way, we can say for certain that she should've rejected David's advances the same law of God, that applied to David apply to her.

It would of course have been very difficult for her to refuse a king of her nation but God does not require obedience only if it is easy to requires it.

No matter what the cost ladies in the society that we are live in the inward promiscuity is rampant and very much accepted. 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 heard so many women say don't tell me what to wear it if you got a problem lusting after me because of what what it what I wear then that's your problem. It's not my problem with folks.

It might be that man's problem, but I want you to know that if you as a lady or causing someone else to less because of your immodest dress that 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 into the palace because when he took that first look that was not sin that was the temptation, but it was not sin. Jesus the Scripture tells us that Jesus was tempted in all points even as we are, but yet was without sin. So so the problem is not the temptation. The problem is yielding to the temptation. Billy Graham used to say, it's not the first look, this is sin is the second look at and I remember I was teaching, and in a high school class before I went in the ministry and I share that with them. It's not the first look, this is sin is the second look at one young man stepped up and said what can we take a long first look, and I know that sin to will 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 of scales in a 40-year-old man who is addicted to pornography several years ago. He told me how it all got started. They said that a friend of his had gone and stolen a pornographic magazine out of the drugstore told several of his buddies about including this young man is in the third grade. Now, and so they went over to the woods to check it out.

I got over 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 you said, I can't remember the color of my notebook that year. He said I can't remember the color my spelling book said I can't even remember the color by third grade teachers hire these that I remembered just 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. But here's the progression you so I thought you reap an action you so an action, you reap a habit he saw a habit you reap a lifestyle you still lifestyle you reap a character so 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 in front 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 and said that if we fantasize about something or think deeply about something on three different occasions that in our mind is just as real as if it actually happened. We need to remember what the apostle Paul said in second Corinthians chapter 10 verses three through six for though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations, and 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 chapter 16 verse 19, Paul gives us a little insight and in the hat. I have victory in the area of our thought life and he says this he said I would have you to be wise, and that which is good and simple into that which is evil in the flesh tells you to do the exact opposite. The flesh tells you that what you needed to is you need to learn as much as possible about sin in order that you won't won't fall into it, in order that you know how to deal with it.

That's a lie because of the more you study sin, the more you you subject yourself to sin the more callused you become to it and it begets to the point where it just doesn't bother you. We tell you something God doesn't want you at the point where sin doesn't bother you. God want your conscience to be sensitive, sensitive to that sin. So the flesh cries out for something more. The flesh cannot be satisfied in first 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 does that mean it means that it causes the body to Craig's 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 hundred to $200 a month on movies and magazines. And I said whoa why wouldn't one magazine enough. Why wouldn't one movie or video enough and he saw that's not the way it works.

And he shared with me that his pornography was an addiction. And he said that it won't wants what what CEA got into one movie. He had to see another and it needed to be stronger than that need to be more perverted than that, in order that he might get the 30 that he needed today.

I'm sick to death of people telling me these raunchy movies out there should not really offend us when he takes up that's a lie. This nation is more callused is more hardened of the gospel is more spiritually blind is 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 gate to the Internet to movies through TV covers 23 verse seven says as a man think it's in his heart so is he.

The question pops up will final study evil things that how will I know what stay away from what did Paul say I would have you to be wise, and that which is good.

I share this illustration with before below this illustration the FBI when their 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 caller a study. Everything about that money until finally they got it so ingrained in their mind what real money is like that when they introduce a counterfeit bill. It just pops up and absolutely just man. While that's it that's counterfeit and they know it immediately because there so will understood and what real money is like, but so it is with the word of God. That's what we are to saturate our heart with God's word saturate your heart with God's word so that will know it so well that went us to Tatian pops up then immediately is like the Holy Spirit since a red flag up in those verses that we've been study and come up immediately to deal with that particular sin stay away from it. Stay away from it almost screams at us and that way we don't have to get the feel into our minds like that takes us to the third point, a covetous consumption with them. It verse three and David sent inquired about the woman and one said is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eli, am the wife of Uriah the Hittite David inquired about the woman with the servant said will this is Bathsheba. She is the she is the wife of Uriah the Hittite, whose Uriah the Hittite Uriah the Hittite was one of David's mighty men of valor, mighty men of valor, was a small group of of soldiers who had the free much the caliber of our our Green Berets today. The these were guys who were who were fighters and they were men who were absolutely loyal to Israel and they were loyal to Israel's King Uriah. It was one of the most loyal soldiers that David had. It was a man who loved David who love Israel, he would've died for David in a heartbeat and the one quality that I think David admired in men as much as anything else was a quality of loyalty.

Uriah was a loyal, dedicated, totally committed soldier to David. David should have been overwhelmed by your rise, loyalty, but his lust for Bathsheba has stripped him of the common sense. No longer is he thinking about your rise, loyalty, no longer is he thinking about what's right what's wrong. No longer is he thinking about the seventh commandment, thou shalt not commit adultery. Why because Bathsheba is a knockout. She's absolutely gorgeous and all that consumes him right now is him having an encounter with her's hearts 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 didn't care.

She feels his children are there he supposed to be an example to his children. He didn't care Uriah the Hittite was one of his very most loyal soldiers and what is he doing he stealing his wife, David, and care about his testimony. He doesn't care that is breaking God's law. And he doesn't care that he's breaking God's heart.

That's what's hard to understand how to. I'm amazed when I talk to people who are in the midst of an adulterous affair. I and what amazes me most is the is the callousness I don't care about people who don't care about their spouse. They don't care about the children. They don't care about God. It just doesn't matter, but it's a covetous consumption. It might sound funny when it's coming from the, the, the lips as a joke from videocast on mash or it might sound funny when it's a bunch of guys at work that are talking about their sordid affairs at Lakehead limitation when it happens to you when it happens to you and your families ripped apart in 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 their 10 things that you must not do and one of them is you must not commit adultery. David did his carelessness led to curiosity's curiosity led to consumption and is consumption led to a calamitous chill calamitous choice is my fourth point. Look at verse four.

So David sent messengers and took her and she came to him and he lay with her and she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness and she returned to her house if David been out in the field with the men where he should have been there in this wooden patent 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.

One of the things that Satan uses most in our lives is this lie it in its PS you've already gone this far, so you may as well just finish it out you ever heard that line your mind, though the thought of doing this is sin, so you've already thought it you may as well just quit 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 this in further, it is not justification is always best to stop before you hurt yourself more and before you harm others more easily heal great Baptist pastor to watch California hurting preach a sermon on the prodigal son years ago.

He entitled the whole pin trail and his story was about the downward journey that the prodigal son made as he went down to the pigpen. He started and said spot spoke of the. The prodigal son back at home with his dad and how in his mind he was. He was fantasizing about what the far country would be like with its prostitutes and its liquor and all the fun and 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 meets all these ungodly friends and then he talks about all the fields and the depravity that goes on in the far country, and then he talks about his poverty. He lost everything that he had an in and look and start looking for a job and the only one who would give you a job was a pig farmer and he talks about the pigpen. Page went down into the pigpen.

He was so hungry that he was scuffling wrestling with the pigs trying to get enough food to fill his hungry belly and then even heal 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 pigpen.

He could have stopped anywhere along there and said this is a yet 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 there somebody at work of the opposite sex, and they are let me know. Maybe in very subtle comments that they are available to you that don't have to continue that needs to stop right now and maybe in other areas of your life.

It might be with experiment with drugs and maybe with unethical business practices, but I like the way EV Hill said it. He said you don't have to go all the way down turn to Christ. Christians realize that you're on the 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.

The spray heavenly father. It seems that lately we have seen many of our spiritual heroes experience similar failures to that of David to patients have not lost power over 3000 years. In first Corinthians 1013, you said for no temptation has taken you but such as is common to man, but God is faithful and he will not permit you to be tempted above that which you're able, but will with the temptation provide a way of escape, that you may be able to bear it. You also sailing him.

He 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 we may we stay humble before a holy God.

We love you Lord, thank you for loving us forcing Jesus precious and holy name we pray. Amen