The importance of starting your day with God and prioritizing your relationship with Him.
How David's weakness in lust led to a series of sinful decisions that ultimately resulted in pain and consequences.
The importance of self-awareness and taking steps to strengthen yourself in areas where you're weak.
The power of Jesus to give people hope and provide a solution to sin.
How many of you ought to be spending time with God every morning before you go out the door to go and do anything else? You have any idea how much trouble it will save you during the day? If you're where you ought to be every morning for a certain period of time, I don't care if it's just five minutes, start your day with God. Don't try to start on your own because if you start on your own, you're not going to like the way the rest of it turns out. Our strength is found in God. So one evening, verse 2, David got up from his couch and was walking on the flat roof of the king's palace. And from there he saw a woman bathing. I've never taken a bath on the roof, but apparently they did then. I guess it was a cool place to take a bath. I don't know. And she was beautiful in appearance. Now, I don't know. Maybe David knew that ladies took baths on roofs. And maybe that's why he went to take a walk on the roof. I don't know. But neither have ever taken a walk on the roof. So there may be some things going on here beyond what we recognize. Now, David sent word and inquired about the woman. And someone said, well, is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. So there's no deception here. David knows she's married. He knows that she belongs to somebody else. He's not where he should be. He wasn't out in battle at the time of the year when kings go to battle. He stayed home. He was on his roof looking at her roof. I don't know. We'll just leave that up to you and the Holy Spirit. Now I found verse 4 to be interesting David sent messengers and took her Hmm Wonder what that means Well it doesn't say that It was consensual Says he took her Doesn't sound too good to me Sounds to me like an abuse of his power When she came to him he lay with her And when she was purified from her uncleanness, so here they're living under the laws of the day. And apparently in this situation, her as a married woman, having sex with him rendered her unclean. And so she had to go through the rites of purification before she went back home Well guess what Your sin always finds you out The woman conceived and sent word and said I pregnant Uh Now I want you to watch the depth of depravity that David, the beloved of God, falls into in this situation. What was his weakness? Lust. Wasn't fear. Wasn't anger. It was lust. The devil picks on different people in different ways. And let me tell you something. You need to know yourself. And you need to do everything that you can to strengthen yourself in areas where you're weak. Come on now. Let me tell you. If you're a man or a woman and you're tempted in that way, you've got a lovely family and you don't want to do anything to mess it up. You've made mistakes in the past. You work at a place where there's a lot of good looking men or a lot of beautiful women. Let me tell you something. You better go in with your eyes closed and pray before you get there. And you don't do coffee breaks with them. You don't start telling them about your troubles at home. You don't take them donuts in the morning. You run like crazy. We don't, you know, how many people say, how did I get here? How did this happen? Well, little bit at a time. Such little minute doses of deception. and we make such tiny little compromises not paying attention to what the Holy Spirit is saying each step along the way and then before you know it you're in such a mess that you end up losing things in your life that were very precious to you come on let's be smarter than what we've been in the past amen verse 6 then David sent word to Joab saying send me Uriah the Hittite so David sent for her husband and Joab sent Uriah to David and when Uriah came to him David starts to make small talk with him because he's got a plan here he wants to get him back home to spend a couple of nights with his wife where hopefully he would have sex with her and then it would appear that she became pregnant by him and David would be off the hook. So we see conniving deception sin on top of sin on top of sin So when Uriah came to him David said ask how Joab was and how the people were doing and how's the war progressing? Not that he cared about any of that. He was making small talk. And David said to Uriah, well, go on down to your house, wash your feet, spend some time at home. Uriah left the king's palace and a gift was sent from the king out after him. Here, let me give you a present while you're at it. But Uriah, who was obviously a man of integrity, a man of loyalty, a man of character, he slept at the entrance of the king's palace with all the servants of his lord, and he would not go down to his house. Well, they told David, well, Uriah didn't go down to his house. David said to Uriah, have you not just come from a long journey? Why did you not go to your house? Now we see the character of Uriah. Uriah said to David The ark of Israel and Judah Are staying in huts Temporary shelters And my lord Joab And the servants of my lord Are camping in the open field Should I go to my house To eat and drink And lie with my wife By your life And the life of your soul I will not do this thing In other words He's saying My brethren are out there suffering The ark of God Has been captured God's name is being profaned I cannot just go off and enjoy myself while everybody else is still having difficulty. I won't do it. Verse 12, then David said to Uriah, we'll stay here today as well and tomorrow I'll let you leave. So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. Now David's not done yet. David calls him to dinner and he ate and drank with him so that he made Uriah drunk. Is anybody seeing this? this is David who wrote all the Psalms the beloved of God that we all admire Psalm 23 the Lord is my shepherd I shall not want come on and he ate and drank with him and he made Uriah drunk and in the evening he went out to lie on his bed with the servants of his Lord and still would not go down to his house oh I bet David's getting nervous now you know in no way am I demeaning David he was a great man of God and you know if you're tempted to take what I'm saying wrong you want to write me a letter about you know I'm trying to make a practical point here that this was a normal man who became a great man of God but he was not a perfect man Amen And apparently he believed that God was greater than his greatest mistake. I think it takes unbelievable courage to just absolutely do something that you knew not to do. You disappointed yourself so bad. You disappointed other people. You hurt other people. And yet say, I will arise and go back to my father and he will heal and restore me once again. What did the prodigal son do? He got such a bad life that he was living with pigs, wasted his father's whole fortune. And the Bible says that he came to himself. I don't know. Maybe somebody is listening to me right now. Maybe you're watching from your couch or your recliner. I said one time when I was preaching, I said, hey, you lean back in your recliner drinking that beer. And we've got this testimony. A young man that was in his twenties was doing that very thing. He'd been strung out on drugs for a long time. And he said, when you said that, it scared me so bad. He said, I sold it up and accepted Christ. So yes, God would stop an entire conference like this just to speak to you. to let you know it's not too late. You can make a good decision right now and start undoing the effects of all those bad decisions that you've made in the past. Amen? God is in the business of giving people hope, not condemning them. And here again, we're not making light of sin. We need to be very repentant. We need to be quick to repent. We need to be very sorry for the things that we've done wrong. But Jesus is the solution to sin. And it's not going to help us to stay in a pit that we got into when God is offering us a way to get out. Everybody else will condemn you and put a lid on your pit. But Jesus is the only one that will come and lift you out. Thank you.
0