Sound Doctrine

Guest (Male): With a quick look at the power of the Holy Spirit, here is Pastor Jeff.

Jeff Johnson: The quickening and regenerating work of the Holy Spirit is different than the anointing of the Holy Spirit. One is the "in" of Jesus when Jesus comes into your life. The other is the "upon" experience that we can have with the Holy Spirit to empower us to be witnesses for him. David came into it all and the Holy Spirit was with him.

Guest (Male): There are a couple of events in David’s life that would seem to stand out above all others. Perhaps the slaying of Goliath is one. And certainly the fall into adultery and murder cover-up would be another. We’ll look at the latter today on Sound Doctrine and seek to learn from David’s mistakes.

We’ve seen many triumphs and successes to this point in David’s life, and now like many of us, he makes a series of poor decisions. Let’s see what we can learn now from the fall of this great man of God. Here’s Pastor Jeff Johnson in 2 Samuel chapter 11.

Jeff Johnson: I know that I don’t need to tell any of you of one of the greatest downfalls of a nation and of a family and of a people is immorality and sexual sin. You just have to study a little history to understand that as we look at great nations, as we look back at Rome and see how they fell, how sexual immorality was the final straw that broke their back. And just what all that went on as we look back, we can see that that has always been the downfall.

As we look at all the improprieties of government, of our leaders, the deterioration of the family unit, and of course we know that because of affairs and because of sexual sin and immorality, because of the TV soap things always promoting it, movies glorifying it, and now because of sexual promiscuity amongst this nation and now to the younger ones under 12 years of age, we’ve got a great epidemic amongst us and that is sexual transmitted diseases are rampant in our society.

It’s gotten so out of hand that now the church leaders have been affected and caught up in falling in sexual sin. It’s in the church, within Christian circles. Today it’s accepted as the norm in of course these days, because these are dark times and of course these things are going to happen. What’s the answer to this dilemma of sexual sin? Well, I believe one of the answers is given to us this morning right here in God’s word, not only through Old Testament examples of not following their direction and what they did.

Because I know the Holy Spirit is so gracious to not just give us the great miraculous things, but to also give us all of the detail of how they sinned and the results of their sin and the brute reality of their sin, the consequences of sin, as here we’re going to look at David. But in the New Testament it is interesting that it doesn’t always talk about and record the weaknesses of the brethren there in the New Testament. A lot of times it’s revealing and seeking to show our position in Christ now.

And I thank God for how the New Testament just fulfills the Old and how he came to fulfill the whole law and how he came to give us mercy and grace. The new covenant that man can now have with God, that man can have his sins removed as far as the east is from the west, never to meet again, washed away in the sea of forgiveness or forgetfulness. And posted there, there’s a sign saying no fishing. You don’t go after them, you don’t go looking for them. You don’t let them come up in your face and to continue to condemn you. No, when God forgives, he forgets and they’re washed away.

I believe that both David, who after his great sin and denial which we’re going to look at, was not only forgiven but what’s beautiful about his end is that he was called a man of God after God’s own heart. This is amazing. Peter also, as we look in the New Testament, after denying the Lord three times, messing up all the time with his mouth. The angel said to Mary, "Mary, go tell Peter that the Lord is risen from the dead. He is not here. There’s hope." And these two are not only great warnings to us, how not to be, but they should be awesome encouragement to us that even though we have been caught in the depths of sin, we can rise up with the Lord’s forgiveness and be restored. So there’s hope. I mean, if David and Peter had hope, then there’s hope for all of us.

But what was the key though to both of them? What did they do to inherit so much hope? And as you look at their lives, it was repentance. They were truly, truly sorry for what they had done. In 2 Samuel chapter 11, the time that we’re looking at here is when David now is king and conqueror of the land. This was definitely a very high point of his career. Up to this time we’ve been looking at David’s triumphs, how he’s been conquering the land. Now from chapter 11 through chapter 20 we’re going to go into David’s troubles.

Not only did he have great triumphs, but David had great troubles. Here David falls into sexual sin and wipes out. You say, "No way, not King David. David that wrote the Psalms?" Yeah, the old moralist himself. Many think of him as no way. Even the Jews, the Jews today, they don’t like to talk about this side of David. But remember he was a shepherd boy and as he was a shepherd boy, God’s quickening spirit came upon him, empowered him to kill a lion and a bear, went before him when he went up against Goliath. Great triumphs.

And then eventually God’s spirit anointed him and brought him into an incredible relationship with his God. The quickening and regenerating work of the Holy Spirit is different than the anointing of the Holy Spirit. One is the "in" of Jesus when Jesus comes into your life. The other is the "upon" experience that we can have with the Holy Spirit to empower us to be witnesses for him. David came into it all and the Holy Spirit was with him. He was so merciful and gracious to us all, wasn't he? Every step of the way he was revealing the love of God as he moved.

Now he’s king, yet the enemy here trips him up. You see, David is a sinner. If you read the Psalms, you realize that. He really knew it too. He was a sinner. The Holy Spirit again reveals so many of the sins of the Old Testament saints. Noah, who found grace in the eyes of the Lord, was caught up in drunkenness and nakedness. Abraham lied over and over again. Moses had a temper that just consumed him, wiped him out. These guys were sinners, but what’s different about them is they were saved by grace.

And that’s such a beautiful word, grace. God’s unmerited favor, we’re never going to earn it. We’re just sinners saved by grace. Paul talking about grace in Romans said, "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." David was a great sinner but God was a great forgiver and he poured out his grace upon David’s life. Well, if that’s a fact, then what should we say then to this? Shall we continue in sin that grace might abound more? If our sin, our great sin, is going to cause God’s great grace to be revealed, then let’s just sin it up.

Some people abuse and misuse grace and that’s wrong. Paul says, "Perish the thought," that we would abuse what God has given to us, that we would be upfront with God and that we would thank God for his amazing grace for our lives and not abuse it and misuse it, thinking that we can sin, sin, sin and, "Oh, God will forgive me." That’s playing games. God forbid that we should play games with him.

One of the safeguards against sexual sin that I see here in the Old Testament is to be fully conscious, or in the New Testament, fully conscious of your weakness. Remember what Paul said? He said, "When I am weak and I understand it and realize it, then I can become strong." Understanding who I am and what I am, I can be strong in the Lord. I can bring my body under subjection and have a hold on things in my life.

Our enemy is definitely a very shrewd enemy and he’s the type of enemy that will continue just to wait. He is very patient. He just continues to wait until we let our guard down and here is where David blows it. David forgot that there is an enemy greater than man. David had conquered the land and conquered most men and he figured it's done. But he forgot that there is an enemy greater than man that was waiting for him.

We need to daily, daily seek the Lord. In fact, Jesus says we’re to pray for our daily bread and that he will deliver us from evil. It’s something that we need to do on a daily basis. It’s not just something we do just once and figure that we’ve got a hedge around us and now we don’t need to pray anymore, we don’t need to seek him every day. Daily we need him to protect us. Daily we need to be aware of our enemy that’s around us seeking to lure us into his traps, to entrap us into this world, into the things of this world.

And here David in the midst of victory, and everything seems to be going great for David. He’s at the top. He’s king. Everything is done, he thought. The enemy comes in. Over in Romans 12 there is a scripture in verse 3 that says, "To every man that is among you, you're not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think." I think what happened here with David, he started to believe his own press. The Jerusalem Daily came out with, "Well, he’s invincible. David, King of Kings," in black letters across the page.

The Galilee Gazette: "He’s the greatest fighter and general Israel has ever had. Nothing can stop King David," front lines. David gets these papers, "Wow. Yeah, that’s me. They got it pretty well. Yeah, I’m bad. I’ve done a lot. Boy, yeah, there’s nothing." He started to believe it. He became intoxicated with his own success and prosperity as he sat up there in his palace and looked at all that he had done.

Yet this fall didn’t happen overnight. In other words, a man doesn’t fall like this just like that. There’s something in the background. There’s something back there that there’s a reason for what is going to happen, what we’re going to see today. It’s something that happened way back. It’s when he began to disobey the Lord and began to collect wives to himself, where Deuteronomy said you're not to do this. But he saw it as just a little compromise and he began to surround himself with women.

One of the three downfalls that I was warned against coming into the ministry, and I think that is for every man or woman of God in this world, there are three enemies that we have. Number one is pride. Number two of course is money. And number three is women. And David was yielding to women in being his problem. Fleshly indulgences, in fact he had a whole harem of them. He could take one at any time and yet with all of that lust for the flesh, it still wasn't fulfilled with the harem that he had.

If you remember in 2 Samuel chapter 8 verse 6 and verse 14, it talked about how the Lord preserved David. It was the Lord in David’s life that kept him from the evil one. He is the one that is able. We’re not able. Over in Deuteronomy chapter 8, God speaks to the children of Israel and says, "Beware that after you have come into the land and you are full of the good things of the promised land, that you forget me. Do not do that because if you do, you’ll be wiped out. If you get your eyes off of me, if you forget what I’ve done for you, that I’m the one that did these things in your life, you won't make it."

Without him we can't make it. When we presume that we can, that’s when we’re really in trouble. "I can handle this today, Lord. You’ve done good for me, thank you very much, and I can handle it from here on out." Watch out. You're in for a fall. You let your guard down, you play around with it a little bit, maybe thinking, "Well, I can just kick back for right now. It’s the time of my life." What’s interesting about sin is that it doesn’t go by age. You think, "Well, the young people, flee youthful lusts, right? It’s the young people that have a problem with this." David’s over 50 here. It doesn't look at age. It looks at compromise in your life and begins to set you up.

And so David takes his ease and the old saying, "You deserve a break today." He felt, "Yeah." But look out, you're in for the fall. He had set himself up one step at a time, one step at a time. There is a large boulder, big huge granite boulder in Georgia and there’s this boulder that’s real smooth, type of a boulder and as you go up it, everybody wants to climb it, but then they start to go out on it and it just kind of slowly goes down. Everybody thinks they can handle it and they take one step at a time and begin to walk out on this boulder and all of a sudden their steps start to slip and they fall to their death. So many have wiped themselves out because it’s just so deceiving. It just slowly goes over then you lose your footing and gravity takes effect and you're down.

In verse 1 of chapter 11 of 2 Samuel, it says that it came to pass after the year was expired at the time when kings go forth to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all of Israel. And they destroyed the children of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But it says David tarried still at Jerusalem. It was the season for battle. Back then they had seasons for battle. We have seasons for fishing and for hunting, right? They had seasons for battle.

And it was the season because there was little rain, the food was plentiful, and of course the plains were very dry then and chariots could go over them very easily because you don’t want to go in the middle of winter because your chariots would bog down. So it was the season to do this, to have war and when you look back at our wars, at World War II, they didn’t fight too much in the winter. Pretty well shut down. They tried and it was real hard. In Vietnam the monsoons would come in and they’d shut it down somewhat.

So the time of winter was a time of preparation. That’s where you planned your strategy out for the war and then in the springtime you’d go for it and you’d take action against your enemy. And this is exactly what is going on here. There were still a few enemies to deal with, but it says that David stayed back. And that is his first step down the boulder. He kicked back. Time on his hands. The idle mind is the devil’s workshop. He just wanted to kick back.

Someone said that the best thing for a sick Christian is a missionary diet. And I think that’s true. When you get to languishing and you get kind of sick and anemic as a Christian living in this nation with all the junk around and you just kind of— what you need is a good kick in the pants to get out in the front lines for a couple weeks. Short-term mission will open your eyes and you begin to realize there’s a whole world out there that is hurting and dying and going to hell and your eyes are open even if you have to go into LA and go down in the garment district and open your eyes and see what is happening. All of a sudden, it’s health to your being, spiritually it picks you up and says, "Man, I’ve got to do something. I can't just sit there."

We’re to gird up our loins and we’re to go. But he sent Joab. Up to this point David was always in the thick of the battle. He was always out there. There’s General David leading the way, but he’s not going to be with them this time. David tarries back at home, hangs up his sword and his shield to kick back and relax. You might say he left his post. There is a scripture in 1 Thessalonians 5 that talks about when they shall say "peace and safety," beware for sudden destruction is going to come.

David was back in Jerusalem saying, "It’s all right. We’re having some great times. This is the greatest time of my life. Everything is going so good." And that’s when the enemy likes to come is when everything’s going so good. So it was all deception. All’s well. Look at verse 2. "And it came to pass in the eveningtide that David arose from off his bed and he walked upon the roof of the king’s house. And from the roof he saw a woman washing herself and the woman was very beautiful to look upon."

Over there they would take naps in the summertime. It’s very hot, very humid, and you take these long siestas. You eat your lunch and you're no good for work anyhow, right? And you're, "Oh, I’ve got to lie down." So it’s siesta time. David getting up out of his siesta because now it was the cool of the day and the evening was coming. It’s the best time to get out there because now the winds have changed. Instead of blowing off the desert now they’re coming off the Mediterranean and just to get out there and just to feel that breeze was beautiful. And David would do this every night.

He would go up to the top of his house. There was a porch there and even today you go over there and they have what on top of their houses. It's part of their house. But for it's up there that they would grow their gardens and they’d have their vines and they’d hang their clothes. A lot of action. They’d eat there during the summer. I mean, the top of their house over there is just like the front room of our houses. It was used a lot.

David of course being on the top of the hill, because over there they would build houses on terraces all the way down and you would be able to look down if you were in the upper ones to look down into the lower ones. Of course the king had have the top of the hill, best view. So he was up there on his porch looking over and it just so happened that— and when I looked at this I thought, well why was she bathing at this time? I wonder if there’s something up here. Was this a trap? I mean does she know that David came out there every day and walked around and enjoyed the cool breeze? Why was she out there at this time?

In this culture though, women didn’t bathe outside, which is interesting. I found a scripture in Proverbs 11:22. It says, "As a jewel of gold in the swine’s snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion." I thought that’s a strange proverb. As a jewel of gold in the swine’s snout, so is a fair woman who is without discretion. Discretion. This was not good what she was doing. She was either being very seductive or being very stupid, not discreet at all. And evidently she is now the devil’s pawn here. Do you see that? She’s being used of the enemy.

This is why, sisters, you need to be discreet. And you say, "Well listen Jeff, hey, God sees my heart and I’m not doing anything." God might see your heart, but I’ll tell you something, man looks on the outward appearance. And you’ve got to be careful not to stumble your brother. That’s why we have at times our baptisms, we always have the women covering up, not wearing a tight t-shirt. Don’t stumble your brothers. Be discreet with your life. Be careful because the brothers do stumble.

Well, she caught his eye, of course she would catch his eye. The eyes, aren't the eyes something else? It’s Eve that saw the fruit. She saw it. The eyes, the lust of the eyes, the Bible talks about. That’s why I think that TV is— when it comes to really giving the gospel out. But man, when you talk about audio, when you talk about the ears, when you talk about radio, when you talk about hearing. Faith comes by hearing and that of the word of God. If any man has ears to hear let him hear what the spirit says to the church. It’s not through your eyes. Through your eyes you can be deceived and the eyes take in so little. It’s the ear.

So he looks and he takes that second step. He thought about what he was looking at. "Boy she’s beautiful, she’s naked. I think I’ll look at that again." Listen brothers, sisters, we’re all going to be tempted, aren't we? We’re all going to be tempted, especially in the area of sexual sin. In this society we are going to be tempted. But it can end right there. For temptation is not a sin, but it’s yielding to that temptation that brings forth sin. It can end right at the temptation.

Guest (Male): And the Lord himself is a great example of that truth. He was tempted over and over again by Satan and never sinned, not even once. This is Sound Doctrine and what you heard today is a message from Pastor Jeff Johnson in 2 Samuel chapter 11. Hopefully as you listen to these messages in 2 Samuel, you’ll have ears to hear what the spirit is saying in these critical times.

God’s word is so practical, giving us direction, instruction, and wisdom to our lives. To hear this message again, simply go to sounddoctrineradio.org or listen through the Sound Doctrine podcast app. You can also hear Sound Doctrine on oneplace.com and wherever you enjoy podcasts, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

We would very much appreciate your support. It helps us deliver Sound Doctrine on stations like this one all across the nation. And you can donate to this radio outreach at sounddoctrineradio.org. We hope you’ll join us for our next study in 2 Samuel. It’s going to be a good one. That’s right here on Sound Doctrine with Pastor Jeff, a presentation of Calvary Chapel Downey.