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The Sin
of Adultery
By
Rev.
Todd W. Allen
Villa Rica 10/12/03
2 Samuel 11:1-27
The
sin of adultery is a sin that many people
consider no sin at all. After all they
reason, it's natural to have desire for
persons of the opposite sex before
marriage and even outside of marriage. In
the minds of broad-minded people just
about every case of lovemaking can be
justified. Before marriage it is because
we all have a sex drive. If it wasn't okay
then why did God make me this way? After
marriage it may be that the marriage is
not going well; perhaps the marriage has
deteriorated to the point where there is
little genuine affection in it anymore.
There is no romance. There is no
compatibility, no common interests.
But
even if the marriage is not suffering any
of these things many believe it is just
not possible to limit yourself to loving
only one person for a lifetime.
When
I counsel couples planning to marry I tell
them to consider the fact that they can
never date another person. Dating
different men or women is finished, done,
no more once you are married. You can
still have a date with your wife or
husband. In fact I recommend that couples
keep romance in their marriages by having
a date at least once a week. But the date
is always with the same person, your
spouse. Marriage is a lifelong commitment
and there is no room for another romance,
another love affair in that most intimate
of all relationships.
America can be classified in the same way
that Christ classified the culture in his
day. He labeled it a wicked, sinful and
adulterous generation. (Mat 16:4)
In this 21st Century the
entertainment industry caters to sex
without restrictions. There is no shame
attached to premarital, extramarital or
homosexual sex in the minds of millions.
Marriage is no longer considered sacred,
but merely an option that ought not be
taken too seriously. Even universities are
winking at students having live-in love
affairs. That would never have been
tolerated forty years ago.
According to Time magazine a
Florida survey found that 75% of kids had
experienced sexual encounters by the time
they reach 12th grade, with some 20% of
the kids having had six or more sexual
partners.
If
sexual encounters begin before 75% of kids
are out of school and then after
graduation affairs are winked at as no big
deal why should we be surprised that
sexual liaisons occurring even after
marriage vows have been spoken will not be
regarded as serious offences either.
The
sin of adultery is not something new. It
has been going on since the fall of Adam.
Some even would say that because Christ
forgave the woman taken in adultery he has
softened the law against adultery, but if
you recall the terms of the acquittal in
her case it was
Go, and sin no more.
Yes, there is forgiveness for sexual sins
but there is no condoning of the sin for
anyone, anywhere, anytime.
In
all the Bible there is no more conspicuous
case of adultery than the case of the
adulterous affair between David and
Bathsheba. God has seen fit to give us a
singular account of his dealings with
David on account of this sin.
In
this message I want to review with you the
fact that God allows temptation and all
manner of sin to occur and that it leads
to even greater sin, which brings
conviction and a stricken conscience that
can only be relieved by true and genuine
repentance.
Almost everyone has been or
will be tempted to commit some form of
sexual sin at some time or another. This
is so because sex is a basic drive in
every normal person. There is nothing
wrong with having a sex drive. But it is
to be fulfilled in the marriage bed. The
Scripture says
4Marriage is to be held in honor
among all, and the marriage bed
is to be undefiled; for fornicators
and adulterers God will judge. Heb.
13:4
God allows the Devil to tempt
you and me but God Himself is not the
tempter. The apostle James wrote:
13Let no one say when he is tempted, “I
am being tempted by God”; for God cannot
be tempted by evil, and He Himself does
not tempt anyone. 14But each one is
tempted when he is carried away and
enticed by his own lust. 15Then when lust
has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and
when sin is accomplished, it brings forth
death. 16Do not be deceived, my beloved
brethren.
James
1:13-16
Notice in our scripture today that
David's temptation to commit adultery came
at a time when he was indulging himself.
His army was engaged in a siege at Rabbah,
a city of the Ammonites, but David stayed
at Jerusalem. No doubt he had told himself
that he could direct the Lord's battles
from his comfortable palace at Jerusalem.
He
was restless, so he went up on the palace
roof to take the evening breeze. Remember,
David was at the peak of his power. He had
been victorious in all of his battles. The
Lord had promoted him to be king, head of
the nation. He had only just recently
defeated the Syrian army and routed their
forty thousand horse cavalry. Seven
hundred charioteers had fallen before his
invincible soldiers. Shoback, commander of
the Syrian forces, died in the battle of
Helam. Now there was only a mopping up
operation. Joab was well able to handle
the situation at Rabbah because the Syrian
forces had abandoned the war and left the
Ammonites to fight alone.
Can't you
picture David on that night in the long
ago? He was the supreme commander, holding
the highest position in the government.
His days of running and hiding from King
Saul are over. The whole nation is now
united under his leadership. Surely he was
entitled to a few days of rest and
relaxation there in the king's palace. So
we read on that fatal night that David got
up from his bed and walked around on the
roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a
woman bathing and she was very
beautiful,
3So
David sent and inquired about the woman.
And one said, “Is this not Bathsheba, the
daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the
Hittite?” 4David sent
messengers and took her, and when she came
to him, he lay with her; and when she had
purified herself from her uncleanness, she
returned to her house. 5The
woman conceived; and she sent and told
David, and said, “I am pregnant.” (2
Sam. 11:3 -5
NASB)
Had Bathsheba been a
single woman David might have asked her to
become his wife. He already had quite a
number of wives and concubines. You would
think that he had more than enough female
companionship, but a person's sex drive
cannot be measured by the number of his
wives, as is clearly evidenced in David's
case. Being married is no guarantee that
lust will quiet itself. As in Nathan's
parable it comes as a traveler desiring to
have his appetite satisfied with food and
drink. It comes sometimes unexpectedly,
unannounced, uninvited. And here was
David, the man with many flocks and herds,
who could have fed this stranger from his
own household, but no, he takes a little
ewe lamb from the poor man with only one
ewe lamb to satisfy his hunger, that man
was Uriah the Hittite who was a soldier in
his service at the front line at Rabbah
and the ewe lamb was Bathsheba.
Please note also that the eye
is the gate of sin. Jesus said, 9“If
your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it
out and throw it from you. It is better
for you to enter life with one eye, than
to have two eyes and be cast into the
fiery hell.
(Matt. 18:9 NASB)
Job
must have faced this temptation for he
said
"I made a covenant with my eyes not to
look lustfully at a girl. Job 31:1 NIV)
David's high office as king did not place
him above the law; rather he was the
guardian of the law. The same goes for the
leader of any nation, including our own.
What happened to David can happen to
anyone. Remember, David was a chosen and
anointed man of God. But that did not
guarantee that he would not be tempted to
sin.
David’s sin could said to be aggravated by
the fact that he was old enough and wise
enough to know better. He was about 50
years old when you would think that sexual
lusts would have been tamed and tempered,
and as I have already mentioned, he had
more than enough wives and concubines to
satisfy his sex drive without indulging
himself with another man's wife. God tells
us that one woman is all any man needs or
should have.
In his sin with Bathsheba
David not only wronged himself but others.
No doubt her monarch overwhelmed
Bathsheba, a woman of good reputation. She
consented to a sin that perhaps no other
person in the world could have tempted her
to commit. In addition to that, Uriah was
a person of honor and virtue, a man of
loyalty and devotion to God and country.
Even as David takes Uriah's wife to
satisfy his lust Uriah is serving
valiantly in the siege at Rabbah.
Once we embark on a course of
sin it sets in motion a chain reaction.
Any sin that is not repented of quickly
and not put away produces more and greater
sin, as we see in this instance. The sin
of adultery is like a fire that burns and
hurts and leaves one maimed and mutilated.
As the scripture says in
proverbs 27 Can a man take fire
in his bosom And his clothes not be
burned? 28 Or can a man
walk on hot coals And his feet not be
scorched? 29 So is the one
who goes in to his neighbor’s wife;
whoever touches her will not go
unpunished.
Prov. 6:27-29 (NASB)
See
in David's case how what started by merely
seeing another person from a distance led
to an interest, then a meeting, perhaps a
cozy dinner, and then to adultery. It's
the oldest story in the world.
Next
came word that Bathsheba was pregnant.
David sends for Uriah the Hittite to come
home on leave. David was sure that Uriah
would have relations with his wife while
on furlough and that the pregnancy would
be due to his visit home. But Uriah
surprised him. He was such a committed
soldier and patriot that he declined to go
to his wife and have relations with her
while the armies of Israel were enduring
the rigors and hardships of war.
Surely this must have shamed David, to
know that one of his brave soldiers
considered it improper to even enjoy the
comforts of a bed, much less the love of
his wife, while others were camped out in
tents and exposed to the dangers of war
while fighting the Lord's battles when he
himself had been lounging around and
taking secret and forbidden pleasures with
this very same soldier's wife. Uriah was a
sacrificing, courageous soldier who showed
more nobility than his king, at least in
this instance.
But
David was not easily daunted from his
purpose. The next night he called Uriah to
come and eat and drink with him while home
on leave and he made sure that Uriah had
more than enough to drink, so much so that
he got drunk. I am sure he thought that
surely his resistance would weaken and he
would go home to Bathsheba. But alas, this
second attempt failed too. Uriah again did
not go home to visit his wife.
David decided to take sterner
measures to solve his sin problem. He took
his pen in hand and composed a memo to his
commander Joab. Listen to the scripture:
14Now
in the morning David wrote a letter to
Joab and sent it by the hand of
Uriah. 15He had written in the
letter, saying, “Place Uriah in the front
line of the fiercest battle and withdraw
from him, so that he may be struck down
and die.” 2 Sam. 11:14-15 (NASB)
You see how adultery prompted
cover-up, then even worse -- deceitful
treachery. He plans Uriah's murder. It was
premeditated murder. And to add insult to
injury he actually sends the memo by
Uriah's own hand. Uriah was a helpless
victim. The pen of David sealed Uriah’s
doom. David has taken his wife and now he
is taking his life, a man who was totally
dedicated to the Lord and devoted to King
David. And all because David had spied his
wife from his rooftop bathing and had
invited her to pay him a visit.
What
treachery! What iniquity is this -- to
take another man's wife and then recall
the man from the front lines where he is
fighting for God and country in order to
cover up the pregnancy he had brought
about in the man's wife, and this under
the pretense of a concern for information
about how the war was going and how the
volunteer army was doing. Then, when he
was foiled in his attempt to get Uriah to
go to bed with his wife he sets him up as
a mark for the enemy, even ordering Joab
to leave him stranded in some thick and
heavy fighting, thus making sure he will
be killed, yet making it appear to be a
providential happenstance. And after he
gets word that Uriah is dead, that his
strategy had worked, he takes Bathsheba to
be his own wife so that the child born
will be his own son.
Oh
what grievous mischief is provoked by the
seemingly pleasant sin of adultery? Did
Bathsheba think when she lay with King
David that she was going to occasion the
death of her husband? Did David consider
what a wicked course he was embarking on
when he cast his eye on Bathsheba bathing
herself and desired to have her? No.
Perhaps neither of them thought of those
things. But that is the way of sin. It
looks so desirable, so pleasurable. It
seemed so right at the time. Surely no
harm could come from a dalliance, a night
of romance, a night of pleasure. And who
will ever know? Who will be harmed? But
soon the serpent is coiled around you and
begins to squeeze. What begins as a
pleasant interlude, a night of love,
becomes a nightmare.
David, unaccustomed to the trail
ways of wickedness and the pathways of
sin, now finds himself snared in a trap of
his own making, and there is no way out
for him. The more he struggles the tighter
the grip of sin, until finally he murders
an innocent man to try and hide his crime.
What pangs of conscience he must suffer
for this. What dreadful thoughts were his,
as he finally sees the hideousness of his
evil work.
A man may still his conscience
for a time, but it will cry out in due
time. The shriek of agony is sure to come
when the pain gradually increases. Like a
needle pressing in the breast it may not
hurt until the pressure gets great enough
to puncture the skin and penetrate vital
organs within. Even so conscience is quiet
enough at first but later it aches and
throbs and every passing day the pain
intensifies. David wrote: 3
When I kept silent about my sin, my
body wasted away. Through my groaning all
day long. For day and night Your hand was
heavy upon me; My vitality was drained
away as with the fever heat of
summer. Psa. 32:3-4 (NASB)
Guilt is one of the most
painful things anyone can experience. It
is to the soul what physical pain is to
the body. Nathan the Prophet comes
to David and tells him the story of the
rich man and the poor man. It is recorded
in 2nd Samuel chapter 12. I will bring
another message on the afflictive
providence that came in David's life
because of his sin of adultery and murder.
We won't have time to adequately deal with
it today. We are out of time. But you have
heard enough today to show you that the
sin of adultery is not only forbidden by
God but that it leads to more and greater
sin which brings the kind of terrible
conviction in one's conscience that David
experienced.
May each of us take heed to himself
to resist this temptation and to repent
even of the sin of lusting after another
person in our heart. Jesus said that if we
lust for a person in our heart we are
guilty of this sin without even touching
the person. But there is forgiveness when
we repent. There will be repercussions as
we shall see in another message, but David
did find forgiveness when he repented of
his sin. In Psa. 32:5 David wrote:
I acknowledged my sin to You, And my
iniquity I did not hide; I said, “I will
confess my transgressions to the LORD”;
And You forgave the guilt of my sin.
What
amazing grace and mercy we find in our
Lord Jesus Christ! Have you repented of
sin in your life? Come to the Savior today
and ask him to forgive you for sins done
in your life and you too will find
forgiveness.
#460
AMAZING GRACE
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The paper and sermon manuscripts from
Pastor
Todd W. Allen
are made freely available for review and
distribution. We only request that proper
web page attribution be provided if
distributed for any reason. Please be
gracious to forgive typos and errors of
expression. These notes are faithful
approximations of what has been preached.
May God be glorified in the preaching of
His Word. |