"The Spread of Sin" - 2 Samuel 11:6-27

What can you learn from how David's unrepentant sin only spread into more damage, deception and death?

Copyright Disclaimer:
The owners of all media in this production have granted permission and hold the copyright: shiftworship.com, epidemicsound.com, CCLI 20811957 / CVLI 20811964, and Artlist.io. This production is not being monetized in any way.

Thanks for listening. Be sure to visit cedarstreet.org for more information.

Listen to more audio sermons HERE.

Connect with us HERE.

E-mail us at info@cedarstreet.org

FACEBOOK
INSTAGRAM
YOUTUBE

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, Cedar Street, I love you so, so very much. And it's my my joy to be with you here this morning. I just want to say again thank you. I want to join Jim and the missions team in thanking you for all of your love and support. And I want to say thanks again to my man Jody. Whenever somebody has a good idea, Jody's the man behind the scenes that makes it happen, and that doesn't happen quickly. A lot of hours of diligence, and uh man, he works his tail off, and I'm just so proud to work alongside him with all that he does, and it's just a joy. Um well, if you're here for the first time, I'm glad you're here today. If you've been uh coming and going, I know spring break, some folks had a chance to catch their breath before the final push across the finish line. I'm glad you're back. Uh but to catch everybody up, we're in the middle of a sermon series as we're looking at uh 2 Samuel. The title of our series, as you can see on the screen, is Faithful and Flawed. We're gonna be looking at the life of King David as we have every week up until now. Uh in the life of King David, we said David is a man of great faith who ran after God's own heart, but also a man of great flaws who ran after God's amazing grace. And I said I've said this many, many weeks. The life of David is like the pitch of a roof. The first ten chapters, he's on the rise, everything is going well. But last week we saw the downfall of his ministry, and it's just gonna be going in a completely opposite direction. And it's all because of one word, and that word is sin. And last week we talked about the stages of sin, how sin doesn't just happen, it happens in stages, and we're gonna review that for those that were not here last week. But today we're gonna go a step further, and we're gonna be looking at the second part of chapter 11 in 2 Samuel verses 6 through 27, and our title is The Spread of Sin. The spread of sin. Sin is a cancer, it doesn't go away. And when you and I, and all of us in this room are sinners, I say I want to say this again. This place is a hospital for sinners, it's not a museum for saints. When I'm talking about sin, I'm not talking about the person sitting in front of you, behind you or beside you. I'm talking about you. I'm talking about me. All of us sin and fall short of the glory of God. Last week we saw how it happens in stages. Today we're gonna find out what happens after we do commit sin if we don't confess and repent of that sin, how it spreads into every area of our life. And to begin, I want to start with just a light-hearted story or illustration. Uh I guess when you're in pastoral ministry, everything you do, you're always thinking about how this applies to what you're reading in the scriptures. A couple years ago, my daughter's nine now, but when she was a baby, I used to read a famous nursery rhyme to her. And this one always reminded me of unrepentant sin. I said, one day I'm gonna preach on that. Well, today's that day. So perhaps you know, and you laugh if you want. I'm it is a little bit lighthearted, but it's gonna make you remember. How many of you know about the old lady who swallowed a fly? The old lady who swallowed a fly, I don't know why she swallowed a fly. I guess she'll die. Well, guess what happens when the old lady doesn't deal with the fly? She does something even worse to try to get after the fly. And if you keep reading it, reading it, reading it, it goes down to the very end. Here it is in all of its glory. There was an old lady who swallowed a cow. I don't know how she swallowed a cow. She swallowed the cow to catch the goat. She swallowed the goat to catch the dog. She swallowed the dog to catch the cat. She swallowed the cat to catch the bird. She swallowed the bird to catch the spider that wiggled and jiggled and tickled inside her. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly. I don't know why she swallowed a fly. Perhaps she'll die. And then there was an old lady who swallowed a horse. She swallowed a horse and she's dead, of course. You'd laugh if you want. I put this little five-year-old nursery rhyme in your mind because that's how you and I act. When we sin and then try to cover it up. When we sin and we pretend like it doesn't matter. Nobody saw it but God. Nobody needs to know about it. We can cover it up all we want. But sin is a cancer, a lot worse than a fly. And if you and I do not deal with it, it will fester, it will spread, and it will cover every area in your life in ways that you never dared dream. And instead of dealing with the issue, which is bad enough, now you've got issue upon issue that keeps happening because you will not be honest with God and honest with others. I want to say this is a good place to be today. This may not be the most uplifting message that you'll ever hear, but it may be one that's life-giving to you. If you're living in something right now that you're that's eating you alive, today's a day that you can bring it to the light and deal with it, and God can begin to bring some healing into your life. So, what's our big idea? We're gonna look at the second part of verse 11 in 2 Samuel. Our big idea in one sentence is this David's secret affair with Bathsheba reveals how unrepentant sin only spreads into more damage, deception, and death. Say it again. David's secret affair with Bathsheba reveals how unrepentant sin only spreads into more damage, deception, and death. So if you want to know more about the spread of sin, would you join me by turning to the book of 2 Samuel, chapter 11? We looked at verses 1 through 5 last Sunday, and we're gonna kind of review that in a moment, but we're gonna read the rest of the chapter together. Now it's quite a few verses, but I just want to encourage you. We're gonna hit the high notes just to see just how spread, how much sin spreads, and then how we can respond to that faithfully with God. So if you have a Bible, turn with me to 2 Samuel 11. If you're new to the Bible, it's after 1 Kings, it's or it's after 1 Samuel, it's before 1 Kings. And if you don't have a Bible, grab the Pew Bible in front of you or beside you. We're on page 308 in your pew Bible. And if you would stand at this time, out of the reverence of the reading of God's holy, infallible, inerrant, and fully sufficient words. 2 Samuel chapter 11, this is after the affair with David in Bathsheba, and he starts covering it up, and sin starts spreading. Here's what it says, starting in verse 6. So David sent word to Joab, send me Uriah the Hittite, and Joab sent Uriah to David. When Uriah came to David, David asked how Joab was doing, and how the people were doing, and how the war was going. Then David said to Uriah, Go down to your house and wash your feet. And Uriah went out of the king's house, and there followed him a present from the king. But Uriah slept at the door of the king's house with all the servants of his Lord, and did not go down to the house. When they told David 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? Uriah said to David, The Ark in Israel and Judah dwell in booths, 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 drink and to lie with my wife? As you live and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing. Then David said to Uriah, Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back. So David remained in Jerusalem that day and the next, and David invited him, and he ate in his presence and drank, so that he made him drunk. And in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of the Lord, but he did not go down to his house. In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by hand to by the hand of Uriah. In the letter he wrote, Send set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him that he may be struck down and die. And as Joab was besieging the city, he assigned Uriah to the place where he knew there were valiant men. And the men of the city came out and fought with Joab, and some of the servants of David among the people fell. Uriah the Hittite also died. Then Joab sent and told David all the news about the fighting, and he instructed the messenger, When you have finished telling all the news about the fighting to the king, then if the king's anger rises, and if he says to you, Why did you go so near the city to fight? Did you not know that they would shoot from the wall? Who killed Abimelech, the son of Jerubasheth? Did not a woman cast an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died at Thebez? Why did you go so near the wall? Then you shall say, Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also. So the messenger went and came and told David all that Joab had sent him to do, or to tell. The messenger said to David, The men gained an advantage over us and came out against us in the field, but we drove them back to the entrance of the gate. Then the archer shot at your servants from the wall. Some of the king's servants are dead, and your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also. David said to the messenger, Thus shall you say to Joab, Do not let this matter trouble you, for the sword devours now one and now another. Strengthen your attack against the city and overthrow it, and encourage him. Verse 26 When the right the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah, her husband, was dead, she lamented over her husband, and when the mourning was over. And when the morning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. Here's the key. But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord. Let's pray. Oh, there's a lot of meat on that bone, Lord. But it applies directly to everybody in this room and everybody hearing the sound of my voice and everybody watching this video, Lord. It applies to every single one of us. Lord, we sin and we fall short of your glory. But when we don't deal with the sin that we've committed, it spreads. It covers so many other areas of our life. We become who we do not want to be, covering up things that we did not want to do, and we don't even know how we got there. Lord, I pray this would be as practical as possible, that for everyone in this room, myself included, we can look at our lives and we can deal with our sin and we can stop the spreading and we can bring it to the light and we can experience your healing and your restoration that we would not become people that we do not want to be because of things that we did not want to do. Be with us right now, dear Lord, I pray. In Jesus' name and all of God's people said, Amen. Now I just want to say last week, so let's, I know a lot we're out last week with spring break. Uh by way of review, just to set us up for what we're gonna look at these next few moments. In the first five verses of 2 Samuel 11, you and I see the stages of sin. All right, there they are on the screen. Verse 1 was the condition of sin. I said, we don't just sin, we always sin when we're in a position to be open to evil seeds being planted, right? And I said, remember the acronym HALT, H-A-L-T. When you're hungry, angry, lonely, and tired, your defenses are down, and you're susceptible to sin. Now, specifically the last two, when you're lonely and tired, you're typically idle. David should have been away at war. The Bible says when other kings are away at war, he was on the rooftop. So before he ever cast his eyes on a beautiful woman, he was not in the right place that he should have been. We definitely know he was tired because he was living in disobedience, not being out at war. He probably was a little bit lonely and bored. And boy, idle hands are the devil's work. So there was a condition before the sin ever happened. The second in verse two is the criteria. A beautiful woman came into his presence. And you know, God created women to be beautiful, but it also says that all sin from 1 John chapter 2, verse 16, all sin is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, or the pride of life. The lust of the flesh is wanting to have pleasure outside God's will. The lust of the eyes is wanting to acquire possessions outside of God's will. And the pride of life is wanting to accomplish and to have things outside of God's will, have power and honor and glory outside of God's will. And so in this particular case, the pride of the lust of the flesh becomes an issue. A beautiful woman is right in his eyesight, and yet that's not his wife. She's already married. And so now the criteria is do I look at this beautiful woman once and say, hmm, she's pretty? Or do I say, I don't care if she's married, I want to know more about her because I want to be close to her, because I'd like to have her as my own. I said the criteria turns into the conception as you look at verse 3. All right, in verse 3, David inquires about her, and that's where the sin is conceived. You can look at a beautiful woman once, you can appreciate something that God has done once, but when you look a second time and either say yes or maybe to the sinful desire in your heart, that's when sin begins to give birth. That's where the conception takes place. You don't even have to say yes, all you have to say is maybe. All you have to say is, well, let me linger a little bit longer. And then you're in a place where you do not need to be. And that leads to four. Stage four is the consummation. All right, that's when in that moment, even though David is a man after God's own heart, in that moment he desired the pleasure of a woman more than he desired the glory of God. And for every one of us in this room, even if we truly love God, you look at a sin in your life, in that moment, you wanted that sin more than you want God in your life. And we all have to come to grips with that, including me. None of us are protected from that completely on this side of heaven. And then verse 5, we see the consequence of sin. Bathsheba's pregnancy eventually brings a sequence of events, and that's what we're going to look at now. So there's a condition, there's a criteria, there's the conception, there's the consummation, and then there's the consequence. Now, as bad as all that is, if David had come clean and told Uriah the Hittite, who is Bathsheba's husband, I know I'm your king, but I committed an awful sin against you. Please forgive me. Yeah, there would have been some issues. He would have gone to his people, the leaders, and told them what happened. There would have been some issues, but he would have nipped it in the bud, and it would not have blossomed into the full flower of sin, spreading like a cancer, the way that it does in this passage, and the way that it's, we're going to see this the rest of the sermon series. So in the short time that we have left, let's just hit some high notes here and see how unrepentant sin in David's life and in your life, how it spreads when you and I try to cover it up. Number one, unrepentant sin only spreads into more damage. Now, in verses six through thirteen, I just want you to look at a few keywords. In verse six, it says, So David sent word to Joab, send me Uriah the Hittite. This is the man that he has sinned against. He has slept with Uriah the Hittite's wife, but he's not asking for Uriah to confess sin. He's asking for Uriah because he's going to be start plotting a plan. And the plan is really simple: get Uriah to go home and be intimate with his wife. So when the baby is born, they think that the baby came from Uriah and not David. He's covering it up. He's starting to put together a plan. And he's using a loyal soldier as a pawn on his chessboard. Again, this is David, a man after God's own heart, a man who was passionate about worshiping God, a man who showed grace to Mephibosheth, who had who was a leper, and let him sit at his own table. This man who was on fire for God, just one chapter later, he's covering up sin after sin after sin. And then again in verse 8, he tells Uriah, go down to your house and wash your feet. He's saying, Go to your wife. Go to your wife and have intimacy with her. That way I can cover up what it is I've been doing. And then in verse 12, this is all backfiring. In verse 8, when he said to go down to his wife, Uriah not only doesn't go to his wife, he doesn't go back to his house. He says, I cannot enjoy the comforts of my own home when my military's out there in the open fields. I mean, so the so the dishonor of David also is reflecting the integrity of Uriah. And it gets worse. He said, Man, I can't get him to go down in his own will. Maybe I'll get him drunk. And if he's all he's all loopy, maybe he's going to be more inclined to go have some fun with his wife. And so he actually leads him into drunkenness, a deeper sin. And yet he still doesn't go to be with his wife. And David is just allowing more and more and more damage to happen. He's getting deeper and deeper and deeper into this, and he doesn't even know how he got there. And I want to say this to you and me. Let's be honest, in the house of God, let's not play church today. Every one of you in this room, in some way, has had a sin in your life and you didn't know how you got there, but instead of dealing with it, you tried to cover it up and went deeper and deeper to a place that you don't even know how you how you ended up at that place, other than just acknowledging. I mean, I can think of small things I did in my high school years, lying and then covering up a lie and then covering up a lie. But I mean, even as you get older and these things get deeper and deeper and deeper, we can all think of times where we were not where we should have been. And instead of just nipping it in the bud, it spread and it spread and it spread. Think about that. The damage that's caused when you don't deal with the sin, but you let it fester and you cover it up. And not only does that lead to more damage, number two, unrepentant sin only spreads into more deception. How do you cover up sin? You keep going and you keep going and you keep going. All right, verses 14 through 21. When he would not go and and be intimate with his wife, well, there's only one thing left to do. And that is be an accomplice to murder. This is a man after God's own heart. This is not someone we see in the first 10 chapters who's a criminal. This man is white hot for God. And now he's planning the death of one of his loyal soldiers so he can cover up adultery. This is how the sin is spreading. He says in verses 14 through 15, in the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. In the letter he wrote, set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him that he may be struck down and die. Deception is when you try to do damage control. Sin causes damage. You got to face the damage. But if you don't, and the damage spreads, you're going to end up in deception because deception is trying to do damage control. In all the years I've been in ministry, I can't tell you how many people, even when they're caught in the act of sin, are still trying to do damage control, are still trying to clean up their image, are still trying to blame everybody else but themselves. When I see somebody that's going through something in life and it's just one string of bad luck after another, Pastor Bo, there's just one string after I want to say, you're not being honest. You're doing damage control. You are where you are because of the decisions that you have made in your life. If you own it, if you if you confront it, if you embrace it, God can bring healing. He can. God wants to forgive your sin even more than you want to be forgiven. His grace is greater than the worst things that you have ever done. But when you and I just want to pretty it up, we want to cover it up, we want to pretend that we're better than we really are, we want to try to spin it so that we come out looking better than we are. God can't bless that. And David's gonna find out. Even though God's love for David never changes, there are consequences to what he's doing. And you know, the thing that happens the worst about deception is you lose sight of reality. Can I say this for a minute? I and I I say this from the bottom of my heart. All of us in this room probably know people that we would call pathological liars. They've been lying and sinning for so long they they begin to believe what they're actually saying. They could probably pass a test if they had to be quizzed on it. They just, that's what they do. They're so detached from reality because they've been living in deception for so long, they don't even know who they are anymore. Gosh, if David could be here and testify about what he went through as a man on fire for God one moment and then trying to plot the death of one of his loyal soldiers another moment, I think he would say, I've lost who I was. And I lost who God is. And I just got caught in trying to do damage control, and deception detached me from reality. Man, I don't want to be that way. I don't want any of you to be that way. You know, sinner as I might be, let me be honest about the sins that I've committed, or I'm gonna spin out of control into a person that I don't even know who I am. Man, that's that's not a place that I want to be. You know, God has a way of handing us over to what we really want. And for those that don't want to be honest, God hands them over to their life of deception. And then they're lost. Then they're absolutely lost. I mean, so many things continue to happen here. You know, when you and I are living in sin, we have we end up lying to our family. We could be lying to our coworkers and our friends and our neighbors. We could be lying with the time that we're spending. We could be lying about the money that we're spending, we could be lying about who we're spending time with. We're leaving things earlier than we should. We stay things, we stay places later than we should. And then we become somebody that we're not. We don't know what's true and what's false anymore. And it begins to spin out of control. That's how sin spreads. It's a cancer, and it leads to more deception. You know, Numbers 32.23 is a sobering word. If you're a note taker, write it down. Numbers 32.23. Simply put, beware your sin will find you out. Eventually. Truth always comes to the light. Always. And it's better that we bring it to the light through repentance than if we have to deal with it through confrontation. That's number two. But third and finally, unrepentant sin only spreads into more death. All right, this is also sobering as you look at verses 22 through 27. There's a lot of dying happening here. In verse 24, it says, Some of the king's servants are dead, and your servant Uriah is dead also. And then skip ahead in verse 26, it says that Bathsheba lamented over her husband. Why? Because the marriage was dead. And then you look even further, verse 27, it says, When the morning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord. Intimacy with God was dead. One death after another. The death of soldiers, the death of a marriage, the death of a king's blessing, the death of kingdom blessing. It just trickles all the way down. It affects everybody. The Bible is clear in Romans 6.23. When it says the wages of sin is death, that's not a metaphor. Death change sin changes things. Something dies. It could be spiritual and it could be physical. Sin is a serious thing. And it just caused more and more death. And we're going to look again, we're going to take the next few weeks as we get towards the tail end of the sermon series here to see the trickle-down effect. Now, I want to say this before we get to the bit to the summing it up. On the one hand, there is no sin that you could ever commit where God's love and God's grace is not still greater. If you're in this room right now and you're under deep conviction about something that you're doing in your life, let me just say this. Hear me clearly. If you haven't heard anything I've said up until now, hear this. God's love for you will never change. His love is dependent upon his character, not your performance. If his love was dependent upon your performance, you and I would be in serious, serious trouble. Because you can't earn his love. His love never changes. Right now, where you are in the pew, right now, or watching this video or hearing this podcast, wherever you are, you need to feel this. You are as loved at this moment as you will ever be. He has unchanging, steadfast love for you. Love is not the question. However, if you are living in unrepentant sin, you are going to face consequences on this side of heaven that are real and they last. We can celebrate grace, but we better hang on to truth. Grace, you can be forgiven, you can be restored, God can bless, and this could be a stepping stone in your journey and in your growth. But the truth is it's still gonna leave a mark on this side of heaven. And so beware, your sin will find you out. So how do I sum this up? Well, there's plenty of grace left for all of us. Grace is gonna get the final word here. David's failure to keep sin from spreading points us to Christ's invitation to repent and seek forgiveness and cleansing. David's failure to keep sin from spreading points us to Christ's invitation to repent and seek forgiveness and cleansing. Now you guys see the verse at the bottom of that slide, right? There ought to be at least one verse other than John 3.16 that this church can recite without looking at your Bible. Because for those of you that are visiting at least once a month, if not more, we recite this together. So we're going to do that right now without looking at your Bible. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Whew, that's music to my ears. I said before, and I'll say again, those words are not for non-believers. If you're in this room and you're not a Christian, the first move is to confess sin and confess Christ as your Lord and Savior. But the Apostle John, inspired of the Holy Spirit, is writing 1 John 1 to believers. And it's not an issue of salvation. David's a man after God's own heart. He is a faith-filled believer of the one true God. It's not an issue of salvation. But if David had repented and David had brought it to the light, and Uriah had not lost his life, and David or Bathsheba and Uriah stayed married, and he dealt with it after it happened, would there have been consequences? I'm sure there would have been. But not the kind that he's going to face, as we're going to find here in these next few chapters. This one decision destroyed the rest of his reign over Israel and brought physical death to several members of his immediate family. Don't think that anything that you do has no effect on anybody else. And the more impact, the more influence you have over others, the more every decision you make affects other people. And I'm just telling you the truth as a pastor, when I live in a four-bedroom house most of the time by myself. And what I do behind closed doors affects everybody in this place. And I feel the weight of that all the time. Every single time I make decisions. And I have dropped the ball many times in my life. But I'm not going to drop the ball in confession. It's a gift that God gives us. It's a chance to be forgiven. It's a chance to be cleansed. And here's the good news. When you are forgiven and cleansed, you may have to face consequences, but you face them with intimacy restored with God. And I know this. If he's with me and he loves me and he's forgiven me and he's restored me, then I can stand and I can face the consequences of my decisions knowing that my God is never going to leave me and He's never going to forsake me. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. So here's the invitation as we enter into a time of reflection. Is there any sin in your life? I don't care if it's something you committed years ago and you've never confessed it to the person who needs to hear it. Maybe you've not confessed it to God, that's step one. But maybe you've not gone to the person and confessed it to them. Or maybe you're doing something right now that you know is not of God and you're spiraling out of control and you say, Bo, I don't want to do this. I don't know how I got here. I don't know how to get out of this. This is a time to get help. This is a time to get on your face before God. This is a time to admit where you've done wrong. And this is a time to cling to God's grace. He wants to forgive you. He wants to restore you. He wants intimacy with you. But you have got to be honest with him. That's the word today. That's the invitation today. Pray with me. Open your heart to God. Don't care what other people think. Be willing to be dead level honest with him, that you need Jesus like the air that you breathe, and that you turn away from the sin that you're walking in, and know that he's faithful and just to forgive you and to cleanse you if you'll bring it to the light and stop the spread of sin. Let's pray. Lord, I don't have to guess. I look around this room and I look in the mirror at myself. Every single one of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. It's not a matter of if we're sinning, it's a matter of if we're walking faithfully and staying in a posture of repentance and faith. So, Lord, I pray right now in this room, right now, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Lord, that you would bring to mind in this time of quiet secret sin that needs to come to the light so that it can be removed and the scars can begin healing. People and relationships can be restored, and the power and the presence of God can flow freely in this place. Help us, Lord, help us to turn to you and not care what anybody thinks, but to make it right with you no matter what we've done. I just pray all this right now in Jesus' name.

unknown 33:07

Amen.