(2 Samuel 11:1-5) It happened in the spring of the year, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the people of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem. Then it happened one evening that David arose from his bed and walked on the roof of the king’s house. And from the roof he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful to behold. So David sent and inquired about the woman. And someone said, „Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?“ Then David sent messengers, and took her; and she came to him, and he lay with her, for she was cleansed from her impurity; and she returned to her house. And the woman conceived; so she sent and told David, and said, „I am with child.“ (KJV)
David was a great man of God. God Himself gave a testimony of David that he was a man after God’s own heart. He wrote the famous psalms in the Bible that inspire us daily. He was a great fighter. He is reputed not to have lost any physical battle that he fought.
Yet one fateful Spring he lost a battle to a different king; the king of the Flesh. He allowed his eyes to see more than he should see and allowed his body to go farther than it should go. He fell to immorality and to cover it up, he killed the husband of the woman. The consequences were dire.
As successful as he was as a King, David became a failure as a parent. His own son Absalom slept with his wives. One son, Anmon, raped his sister Tamar and forever messed her life. The brother of Tamar Absalom eventually killed Anmon. Later Adonijah the first born of David was killed by Solomon his brother as he sought to take his father’s young wife to marry! All these tragedies can be traced to the sin David had committed.
(2 Samuel 12:9-11) Why have you despised the word of the LORD, to do evil in His sight? You have stricken Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the sons of Ammon. And therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. So says the LORD, Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house, and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor. And he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. (MKJV)
As John C Maxwell so well puts it, sin takes you farther than you wanted to go. It keeps you there longer than you were prepared to stay. And it makes you pay a far greater price than you were prepared to pay.
Winter is so cold. We all welcome Spring and eventually summer with both hands. Often we dress less, we take holidays and relax more which are all in order. Slowly but surely the flesh takes over and we find ourselves missing Sunday services, we find ourselves isolated from the Bible which we have little time to read and study and of course there is little time to pray. Then like battalions of enemy soldiers we are attacked from every side from the immoral internet with all the enticing pornography, the T.V movies with so much immorality and of course the innocent looking but often very ungodly, endless wedding, engagement, and birthday parties where the trap is finally set for the unwary Christian!
As winter finally comes back in November, the pastor must deal again with confessions of brothers and sisters who in the summer fell to pornography and to immorality. What these brothers and sisters do not realize is that just like David, God will forgive you, but the consequences of your actions may not be erased. You may have aids, or be pregnant or your family break down and there are those who the devil destroys spiritually and sometimes even physically.
In the greatest hour of testing both for Jesus and His disciples, the disciples slept while Jesus prayed. Jesus admonished them to arise and pray but the flesh took over and they slept. Eventually when the test came they all fell and forsook Jesus. Peter even denied three times that he knew Jesus. I hear the Holy Spirit admonish us once more to rise up and pray.
(Luke 22:46) And He said to them, Why do you sleep? Rise and pray lest you enter into temptation. (MKJV)
I pray for you the prayer that Jesus for you prayed;
(John 17:12-15) While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name. Those that You have given Me I have kept, and none of them is lost, except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. And now I come to You, and these things I speak in the world that they might have My joy fulfilled in them. I have given them Your Word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not pray for You to take them out of the world, but for You to keep them from the evil. (MKJV)
Pastor James Kimani.
Immenstadt im Allgäu.
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