This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to week eight of our look through first and second Samuel.
This is day one of week eight, Heinz's Pastor Tom. And we are going to this week
start with a famous story from the life of David.

If I say David and what fills in the end after that for you, I think about half
of us it would be David and Goliath. I think the other half, well there might be
a few David and Jonathan's out there, but the other half would be David and
Bathsheba. David and this struggle that he faced in his life, this sin that he
committed in his life.

Why was David called a man after God's own heart? We see one of the reasons
here. David trusted God with his greatest success with Goliath, but he also
trusted God in his greatest failure with Bathsheba.

He trusted God through all of his life. These next couple days we are going to
take a very simple look at this story, this sin that David committed. We are
going to talk about what David did wrong and we are going to talk about then
tomorrow what David did right about what he did wrong.

To begin with, let me read for you in chapter 11 beginning in verse one, then we
will skip a few verses and go all the way down to verse 26 and 27 after we have
read this story together. The Bible says in the spring at the time when kings go
off to war, David sent Joab out with the kings men and the whole Israelite army.
They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Reba, but David remained in Jerusalem.

One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the
palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful and
David sent someone to find out about her.

The man said, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah
the Hittite? " Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him and he
slept with her.

She had purified herself from her uncleanness. Then she went back home. The
woman conceived and sent word to David saying, "I am pregnant.

" So David sent this word to Joab, "Send me Uriah the Hittite. " And Joab sent
him to David. And when Uriah came to him, David asked him how Joab was, how the
soldiers were, and how the war was going.

And then David said to Uriah, "Go down to your house and wash your feet. " So
Uriah left the palace and a gift from the king was sent after him. But Uriah
slept at the entrance to the palace with all his master's servants and he did
not go down into his house.

When David was told Uriah did not go home, he asked, "Haven't you just come from
a distance? Why didn't you go home? " Uriah said to David, "The ark and Israel
and Judah are staying in tents and my master Joab and his lord's men are camped
in the open fields.

How can 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. " And then David said to him, "Stay here one
more day and tomorrow I will send you back.

" So Uriah remained in Jerusalem the next day and the next, that day and the
next. At David's invitation, he ate and drank with him and David made him drunk.
But in the evening, Uriah went out to sleep on his mat among his master's
servants.

He did not go home. 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. " Verse 26, after
Uriah dies, "When Uriah's wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for
him. And after that time of mourning was over, David had her brought into his
house and she became his wife and bore him a son.

But the thing David had done displeased the Lord. " And we all get caught up in
temptation. We all get caught up in sin in our lives.

As we walk through what happened with David here, this man after God's own heart
who all of a sudden is chasing after just what he wants, we can learn some
things about how you and I can be protected against temptation in our lives, how
we can trust God in the midst of temptation. What did David do wrong? Let's go
through a list of four or five things.

Number one, he didn't go off to war. You notice at the beginning when kings go
off to war, he wasn't there. If he'd been off to war, he wouldn't have been
there to commit this sin.

David was not where he should have been. And because of that, this sin came into
his life. In the New Testament, we're told that when Satan tempted Jesus, and
Jesus said, "No," he went away to wait until an opportune moment.

Satan is waiting for opportune moments to tempt me, to tempt you. So you and I,
we have to beware. We're going to look at several things to beware of in this
passage.

And one of the things we have to beware of is the opportunity of inactivity.
Satan wants to make an opportunity out of inactivity. He wants to use those
times when nothing else is happening, not for rest in our lives, not for worship
in our lives, but for temptation to take hold in our lives.

Second thing David did wrong is he sent someone to find out who she was. Now, I
don't know the situation. It doesn't read like he did anything wrong and
happening to see her when he was on that rooftop.

Just look over and see her. But he didn't just see her. He looked again, and
then he sent someone.

This is the crucial moment in the temptation. He sent someone to find out who
she was. You have to beware of the attraction of temptation.

It's almost a suction. It's a magnetic attraction of temptation. You can say I'm
just looking.

I'm just thinking. I haven't done anything about it yet, but it will pull you
in. And suddenly you're not thinking.

You're letting the temptation do the thinking. That's the crucial moment here in
David's life. There's this moment in which you get out of the driver's seat and
you put the temptation in the driver's seat to begin to make some decisions.

And at that moment, you know where it's going to drive you. You know where that
temptation is headed. Temptation is headed towards sin.

When you put temptation in the driver's seat in your life, it's going to head
you toward a sin. We all know this. We all struggle with this all of our lives.

We've all sinned. We've all fallen short. So this moment, he hasn't sinned yet,
but he sent someone to find out who she was.

He put temptation in the driver's seat and it drove him right into this sin.
Third thing he did wrong is he sent someone to get her. Third thing to beware of
is beware of the seduction of power.

David's the king. He has the power to call anyone to him that he wants to. So he
sends someone.

He doesn't go himself. He sends someone to get her and bring her to his palace.
David's trust in the Lord put him in the king's palace, but it also gave him
this power to act upon a whim and your trust in the Lord.

It gives you great spiritual strength many times in your life, but it also
sometimes can give you a power over a person or over circumstance. The truth is
God has given every one of us the power of choice and it is a seductive power.
This idea that I did it because I could do it.

Satan wants to use that in my life, in your life. Beware of the seduction of
power, beware of the attraction of temptation. And then a fourth thing he did,
he slept with her.

Beware of the lie of sin. You and I are being told a terrible lie practically
every day of our lives. It's the lie of sin.

And when you look at this particular sin, this sexual sin that David committed,
we're told all the time that this was the right thing for David to do. That's
the lie. We're told by Hollywood, which has been proclaiming that "Strangers in
the Night" is the most exciting thing since that song was a very, very new song
and now it's a very, very old song.

We're told by television where primetime soap operas present lust and adultery
as exciting while marriage is confining. It's boring. What's the lie?

Sin is exciting and marriage is boring. That's the lie. That's the lie.

Now you can see it with other sins. The idea that working for money is boring
but quick riches, especially if you can feel like you cheated somebody out of
them a little bit, those are exciting. Sacrifice is boring but selfish pursuit,
that's what's exciting.

Now with every lie there's a little bit of truth in it and the truth is there is
a moment of excitement. There is pleasure in sin for a season but the season is
very, very short. So beware of the lie of sin.

Satan wants to tell us this is the exciting life when really the truth is it's
the destructive life. When you and I, we have to beware of the danger of sexual
attraction. That's what David faced here.

That was the sin that he was facing here. It's a very powerful, powerful
emotion, powerful feeling, powerful physical things are happening in your life
but the truth of the matter is along with that power there also comes great
destruction. If I asked you to carry a glass of water across the room that'd be
no problem but if I gave you a vial of nitroglycerin to carry across the room
you'd walk very carefully.

Satan wants us to think that we don't have to walk carefully in these areas but
the truth is we have to beware. We have to beware of this destructive power of
sin in our lives. We have to beware of what it can do to us.

Well the next thing that happened isn't something that David did wrong but it's
something that he experienced and that is she became pregnant. We have to beware
of the consequences of sin. David listened to the lie.

I can have a relationship with her without responsibility, it'll be the more
exciting thing to do, romance without responsibility and it took David exactly
one verse to find out how wrong he was. You see him begin to treat the
nitroglycerin like water in chapter 11 verse 4 and you hear the boom, the
explosion in chapter 11 verse 5 and you see as we walk through this story the
harder that David tried to deny responsibility the greater his responsibility
grew. He moves from temptation to adultery to deception to murder to having a
hardened heart before God because of it all.

So then he does the sixth thing, he tries to cover it up. First he brings Uriah
home hoping that he'll go and sleep with his wife and then they'll think that
the baby is their baby but that didn't work because Uriah had too much character
for that so he had Uriah killed. Beware of the decision to hide.

David was trying to run away from his sin and there was more destruction in his
decision to hide than even the original sin, as much destruction as there was in
that. It was the destruction of murder, of taking this family and tearing it
apart. The faster you run away from your sin the worse it gets.

It gets worse and what we tend to do, what I tend to do, you tend to do as human
beings is we run faster in the wrong direction. Healing is in the direction of
confessing your sin. Sin multiplies when we hide from our sin.

Now tomorrow we're going to talk together about what David did right. How David
dealt with this when he realized what he had done. But for today, as we pray,
let's just have a time of honest confession, talking to God about who we are and
the fact that we've all sinned, we've all fallen short.

Would you pray with me? And just in prayer say, "Jesus, I admit it, I'm a
sinner. I need your forgiveness, the forgiveness that can only come from the
cross.

" And I pray you'd search my heart and instead of being filled with pride or
letting temptation guide the way in my life, I pray you'd help me to see your
love for me. Help me to see your way out. Help me to see that you have a
different kind of life for me to live.

I want to live that life. I want to live in that light. I pray this in Jesus'
name, amen.