NO MORE ALLOWING FOR IMMORALITY
"I'm only human. I'm just doing what comes naturally. After all, God knows a man has needs. He made me this way."
One of the most devastating sins I know of is that of sexual immorality. Of all the things that can crush a man spiritually, emotionally, and physically, none can do it faster or more completely than a plunge into sexual sin.
Some of the strongest and finest men in this generation have bitten the dust because of failure to bring this area of their lives under God's control. And even those who have never fallen physically regularly fall mentally.
The reason sexual sin is so destructive is because sex is such a potent gift. Our sexuality is an integral part of our makeup as human beings. God created us as man and woman. Like all of God's good gifts, sex can bring great joy and fulfillment to life when used correctly. But when used incorrectly, it brings great devastation.
We might liken sex to a fire. A fire in the fireplace is warm and delightful. But if that fire gets out of the fireplace, it can burn the house down. The fire of sex has been given for the fireplace of marriage. Once it leaves there, someone is going to get burned.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of burn victims out there, even in the Christian community. Some very successful men have lost their
careers over their sexual behavior. Husbands have sacrificed their marriages for sex. Fathers have deserted their families for sex. Single men have traded their sexual integrity and purity for sex. And gay men are at constant risk of their very lives for it.
Yet with all of this, the great irony is that for most men, sexual sin is one of the easiest sins to excuse and rationalize. The man who devours pornography tells himself they're only pictures. The man who
lives on lust excuses it by saying his fantasies are harmless. The single man who engages in sex tries to excuse his sin by shifting the responsibility to the woman. The adulterer says, "Well, at least I'm not homosexual." And the homosexual says, "I can't help it. God made me
this way."
The sad thing about excusing sexual sin, or any sin for that matter, is that it actually makes things worse. It doesn't relieve the offender's sense of guilt. In fact, it increases guilt, because neither God nor the people hurt by the sin are buying the offender's excuse—and he knows it deep down.
In addition, excusing sin lessens the chance of getting to the root of the problem and dealing with it, leaving the pornography user, the adulterer, or the homosexual mired in his sin. Many men trapped in sexual sin say they feel helpless to stop. They think there is no hope
for them—and there really isn't, as long as they insist on excusing their actions.
Now every man has experienced sexual temptation on some level. All of us have felt the flames of this fire. Some of us have been set aflame, and others have been scorched. If you have never been touched by it, you may want to check your pulse!
So I am proceeding on the assumption that I am not talking a foreign language to most men. But my purpose is not to add to any load of guilt you may be carrying. The Holy Spirit is the Convicter.
I have three purposes in this chapter. First, I want to help you lay aside the excuses that make it easy for a man to commit and justify sexual sin. Second, I want to help you deal with this sin if the need is there. Third, I want to fortify your spiritual defenses against the sexual temptation that is common to all of us (1 Corinthians 10:13).
It should not surprise us to learn that the Bible does not hesitate to talk about sex. The Bible does not blush to tell us the truth about sex, both as God created it to be and as humankind has twisted and misused it.
THE CONCEPTION OF SEXUAL SIN
Since one of the most powerful methods of teaching is by real-life example, we are going to look at a biblical story of a man who committed adultery. We are going to watch his life crumble as a result of his sin and his attempts to excuse and cover it up, and then we are going to see the grace of God put this man back together.
King David is our man here, and 2 Samuel 11:1 tells us right off that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time: "In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army.... But David remained in Jerusalem."
Normally a king would lead his army into battle. But David had already solidified his kingdom. There were just a few skirmishes to take care of, so he decided to stay home. Now David was about fifty years old here, a time when many men peer into the mirror and see some gray hair and some wrinkles. Then the question comes, "Do I still have it?"
So we have a middle-aged man hanging around the house with nothing to do. It's springtime, the season for love. And he's a king, so he can have anything he wants. Bad combination.
Then it happened. David got up from his late-afternoon nap and decided to walk around on the roof of the palace, which was situated high above the city. From there, he could see down into other homes. As David scanned the city, "he saw a woman bathing." (2 Samuel 11:2) And not just any woman. We are talking about a "bad mammajamma." She was "very beautiful."
David looked out over that rooftop and saw one of God's choicest specimens, with all the right measurements. He watched as the water ran down her hair and over her skin. The early evening's moonlight only added to her beauty. David looked and looked until he could not stop looking. Then he inquired about her and found out her name was Bathsheba.
Now you must understand that King David was coming off about twenty years of spiritual success. He was walking with God. He had his failures, but he had lived many years in spiritual strength. We are talking about the David who killed Goliath, the poet who wrote most of the Psalms.
It was David who said, "I will extol the LORD at all times; his praise will always be on my lips" (Psalm 34:1); "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God" (Psalm 42:1); "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path" (Psalm 119:105); "I lift up my eyes to the hills—where does my help come from?" (Psalm 121:1)
But on that evening David wasn't "mountain looking." This woman captivated him. We need to remember that David was not trying to be carnal or looking to fall that night. But he was a man, and he saw a woman. The Bible says, "If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall!" (1 Corinthians 10:12)
Many of us would say, "I would have never gone so far as to try and find out the woman's name." Take heed, because you can do anything when Satan gets ahold of you. David not only found out Bathsheba's name, he learned something else about her. She was "the wife of Uriah the Hittite." (2 Samuel 11:3)
Uriah was one of David's most loyal soldiers. The woman was married to a man who was faithful to David. But that didn't stop David from carrying out the sin he was formulating in his mind. Sexual sin blinds a man to the consequences.
The Bible says David saw Bathsheba. But what he didn't see was that this one night would change the rest of his life. What he didn't see was that this one night would cause four of his children to die, as we will learn later. What he didn't see was that this one night would split his kingdom in half. What he didn't see was that he would become a first-degree murderer.
So as a man thumbs through his pornographic magazines or watches X-rated videos, as he looks at what he ought not to be looking at, he gets spiritually blinded. He doesn't see the whole picture, the real story. And that's a tragedy.
THE COMPLICATIONS OF SEXUAL SIN
A tragedy was unfolding in this case for sure. David sent for Bathsheba, and "she came to him, and he slept with her." Tomorrow didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was right now. The only thing that mattered was his passion. In the midst of his idleness, David made the mistake of his life. But he didn't count on Bathsheba getting pregnant.
Just one night and it's over, it's finished, we think. David said, "I had my party. The party's over." No, Bathsheba was pregnant. Sin can get complicated.
Bathsheba's pregnancy was the start of the tomorrow that David didn't think about the night before. Now he's got to do something. He's got to cover this up. He can't let anyone know. A king can not only have whomever he wants, he can also do whatever he wants to get rid of his problems. David thought about it and formulated three plans to cover up this mess (2 Samuel 11:6-17). We could call this the "Davidic Watergate."
Plan A was to send a message to Joab, his army chief of staff, and have him send Uriah home to Jerusalem. "Tell Uriah that I want him to come back home and rest up. He's been fighting hard, and I want him to spend a nice weekend with his wife, take a little 'R & R.'" Of course, David hoped Uriah and Bathsheba would make love, and Uriah would then think the baby was his.
But David didn't bank on Uriah's loyalty. David tried to send Uriah home, but he curled up on David's front porch (vv. 8-9). David asked him what he was doing, and Uriah answered:
"The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents, and my master Joab and my lord's men are camped in the open fields. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and lie with my wife? As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing!" —verse 11
Again, what a beautiful picture of faithfulness and integrity on Uriah's part. Now David had two problems he hadn't banked on: Bathsheba's pregnancy and her committed husband. Plan A crashed.
So David set Plan B in motion: get Uriah drunk and send him home, where he would finally sleep with his wife and David could get this nasty mess fixed (verse 13). But even drunk, Uriah wouldn't cooperate. He wouldn't go to his house. Then David pulled out Plan C, which was first-degree murder:
In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. In it he wrote, "Put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die." —2 Samuel 11:14-15
When you read about the carrying out of the plot and the report to David in verses 16-25, what strikes you most, if you are like me, is the calculation and the coldness of the whole thing. David made Uriah deliver his own death warrant to Joab. Trying to cover up sin always leads to more sin. Sin not dealt with early becomes more sin to deal with later.