Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: By the age of 20, David battle-ready had killed his first giant. What made him a giant killer? Well, all his young days, he was alone, shepherding on the hills of Galilee, and he learned quietude. He learned solitude, and he learned to love God and obey Him.

And he did well for about 20 years. He made his mistakes, of course, but he battled on and God blessed him and prospered him and empowered him and honored him and put him on the throne of Israel. And he fought and won battles with the giants of pride, greed, fear, and despair. And he wrote psalms that today go around the world.

Time sped, youth and young adulthood passed by, and God's heart smiled. David's mighty men joined his forces in government and in the army, they who'd risked everything to share his exile while Saul was hunting him. They were given places of prominence and quite rightly so, and there was none so loyal as Uriah the Hittite, one of his closest friends whose father too was one of God's mighty men with David in the stronghold and whose father was Bathsheba's grandfather, one of David's most trusted counselors and friend.

So David's on the throne and the giants continue to fall left, right, and center. And sometimes David fought and was wounded and sometimes he very nearly died. And then came middle age and the giants of wrath conferring which of their number to send out to face David next chose one of their most trusted and best: giant temptation.

"Let's see what you can do," they said as they sent him on his way from the dark places. And giant temptation hunkered down to wait his opportunity and it was not long in coming. And so it was that at the time that kings went forth to war, David stayed in Jerusalem. You know, giant temptation camps our homes a happy hunting ground. And we're going to read about that for the first six verses in 2 Samuel Chapter 11.

In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab. He sent him out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army, and they destroyed the Ammonites and they besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem. And one evening, David got up from his bed and he walked around on the roof of the palace. And from the roof he saw a woman bathing and the woman was very beautiful.

David sent someone to find out about her and the man said, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, he slept with her. She had purified herself from her uncleanness. Then she went back home. And the woman conceived and sent word to David saying, "I'm pregnant." So David sent word to Joab, "Send me Uriah the Hittite."

Giant temptation comes to all of us. All of us know him, sometimes we don't recognize him. All of us know what it's like to be on the roof, to be faced suddenly with a temptation that we're not prepared for. Giant temptation knew that David shouldn't have been on the roof in the first place, should have been out fighting the battles of the Lord. He'd always been at the head of his army. He'd always led Israel to conquer and to fight. First the Philistines, now the Ammonites, etcetera, etcetera.

In the time that kings went forth to battle, David stayed at home. That sounds as if there's a season for war, and in a sense there was. It was springtime. Why? Because they didn't have concrete on the roads. They got stuck in the mud. They had to wait till the rainy season was over. They had to wait till the fields had food because how else could they supply the army and keep them fed? And so in the springtime, that's when kings went forth to battle in those Old Testament days.

David was captain of the army of the Lord and he should have been there. So why did he stay home? You know every Middle Eastern house has a flat roof. It's wonderful. Stuart and I have been many, many times in Israel and the Middle East and in Arab homes and in Israeli homes and we have been invited in the evening to go up on the top of the roof just to get out of the stifling heat in the tiny little streets around Jerusalem and to get a breath of fresh air. And you wander around or you sit and you talk and you have refreshments up there.

And there are steps up to the roof, you know, they're on the side of the house when you think of the little square house and you can think of the steps. And I want to talk about the steps up to the roof because David climbed steps to get himself where he shouldn't have been. And that's what we do too.

And the first step, I believe, was laziness, laxness. He'd let his discipline slip, his physical disciplines. In the evening he got out of his bed. What's he doing in his bed until the evening? Well, he had a nap like everybody does in the Middle East if you're not fighting the battles of the Lord. And you're supposed to get up about three o'clock and get on with your life. This was well past three o'clock. He's lazy. He's allowing his 50-year-old body to deteriorate and spiritually he's middle-aged as well.

And that can happen to us. We can get so that we get lax, so that we get lazy. We can lose our elasticity. I think of a rubber band and how it can be stretched and stretched until it won't go back into shape. And we can lose that spiritual edge just as David did. And giant temptation waits and he looks and he's aware of when that happens in our lives.

How had David grown up? Loving the Lord and loving His Word. Read Psalm 119, it's all about the law of the Lord and how he'd learned it and memorized it, how he had it in his heart. But did you know that in Deuteronomy there are rules for kings of Israel? And one of them has to do with the Word of the Lord. Let me read what it says.

In Deuteronomy it says, "When you are king of Israel, oh man, you must not acquire great numbers of horses for yourself. You must not take many wives or your heart will be led astray. You must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold," all of which David had done and Solomon his son more so after him. It goes on, "When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law. He must take it from the priests and the Levites.

It is to be with him, he's to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees." So whoever became king, Saul, first king, David, second king, Solomon, third king, had to go and spend some time with the Levites and the priests and they gave him a clean scroll and a pen and he'd sit there among them, I don't know how long, and he would copy the Ten Commandments on a scroll and the decrees that came out of them.

And he was to carry it with him into his throne room, onto the battlefield, into his bedroom. They were to be with him all the days of his life and he was to revere the Lord our God that wrote those laws. As I read the Ten Commandments that David had written on his scroll, it struck me that David had at least broken six of them by the time this story's through. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength and your neighbor like Uriah, like Bathsheba, as yourself."

Put their interests first. "Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not lie. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife." So somewhere along the way, the scroll got lost or laid aside or other scrolls got read just like happens to us. When is the last time you opened this Word and you couldn't wait to read on and on and on and it gripped your heart? When did you last hang your heart over it?

When was the last time you spent time with God? You say, "Jill, I read my Bible every day." I didn't say when was the last time you spent time with your Bible. I said when was the last time you spent time with God with your Bible, with Him pointing out the points. You know, if you let God read His Bible to you, it's an altogether different thing.

But David somewhere had started divorcing reading the scroll from doing what the scroll said. He just began to do it, just like we begin to do it and it gets rote and it gets a bit uncomfortable and we begin looking at the watch we have on our soul and seeing, "Oh dear, I've got ten minutes left." And somewhere along the line he lost his spiritual edge. He just lost it bit by bit by bit. No wonder he was on the roof. It's the first step up to the roof.

When I was converted, the girl who led me to Christ signed me up for what's called the Navigator Memory System and she said, "I want you to memorize scripture." Why, I said. She said because it will help you. And so I began to memorize scripture and in the end she had me memorize and say to her at different intervals 500 verses from this Bible including the context. And to this day, hundreds of years later, I remember what I remembered when I memorized it.

For example, Psalm 119 verses 9 and 11, David's psalm about the Bible: "How shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to His Word. Thy Word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee." For example, 1 Corinthians 10:13, "There has no temptation taken you but such as is common to man. But God is faithful and He won't allow you to be tempted above that you're able, but will with the temptation make a way to escape so you can get out."

Get off the roof. Bear it, deal with it, say no. I still remember those verses to this day. When was the last time you memorized one verse of scripture? Are you hiding it in your heart? This isn't for our kids in Sunday school, folks, this is for us. It's for a 50-year-old middle-aged man like David. It's for a young woman like Bathsheba. It's for every one of us. When Jesus was tempted, how did he answer the devil? With scripture. "It is written. It is written. It is written."

One of my favorite ones I remember helped me through college days: Remove your foot from evil. Get out! Get off the roof! Saved me in many a situation. David had forgotten, hadn't read the scroll for a long, long time. First step into trouble. Second step, self-indulgence. He had power, success in every dimension of his life. Doesn't mean it's wrong to acquire material goods. The Bible doesn't say that money is evil. It says the love of money is the root of all evil and there's a little subtle difference there.

Of course money isn't evil. Money is neutral. It's what you do with it. It's what you do with the horses and the houses and the accumulation of all these things. When I was writing about Solomon, it's incredible. All the things Solomon, David's son, accumulated that he shouldn't have done. I wonder why. And at the end of the long list of how he'd accumulated people and women and harems and lands and orchards and everything else, it says, Solomon speaking, "I never said no to myself."

And that's the problem with power. You get into a situation with power where you have control over people and over things and you find yourself in a position where it seems legitimate to accumulate things and you think you have things but things have you. The love of any of those things is the root of all evil and that's what happened to David.

Now I have to tell you something, temptation itself isn't sin. The first thought David had as he looked at Bathsheba wasn't sin. The second one was. All of us are tempted. So to have a thought put in your mind, either from your computer where a porno thing pops up and you look—the first look isn't sin, the second look is. And if you don't push that delete button immediately and you allow that thought to take you to the next one, you're gone. You're gone.

But temptation isn't only a possible seduction, but it has the possibility of strengthening you. It's not only a weakness, but it can show God's strength. Not only does the devil try to destroy us through temptation, but it's God's way of strengthening us. God's way of strengthening us.

The devil uses a three-prong attack: the world, the flesh, and the devil. Did it with Jesus. Jesus was hungry, a God-given appetite. "Well, you've got miraculous powers, Jesus," says Satan. "I know that. Turn those stones into bread. Satisfy your legitimate God-given hunger." And Jesus said no. If I satisfied my God-given legitimate hunger for bread, that would be illegitimate for God has not given me permission at this particular time to satisfy that particular God-given desire. And Jesus said no and stayed hungry.

Is it ever right for us to stay hungry when a God-given legitimate appetite like for bread or for sex says eat, take, get her? How can it be wrong if God has given us this? Then why should we say no to it? I remember speaking at Madison when I first came over here, we'd been working with kids, street kids for 13 years in a youth mission, and I was delighted to be invited to go onto the campus and speak to the Christian union.

So I get there and I do my thing and I thought I was done and I was going home and they said, "I hope you don't mind but we've put on a little open-air meeting in Madison campus where everybody congregates." It was in the days, it was in the '70s, a long time ago, when everyone was marching for a cause on our university campuses. And they said everybody congregates to march for whatever cause it is and we can't remember what it is this time. But that's a great opportunity to have an open-air meeting and if we get a Christian speaker like you, then we put them up in this crowd at lunchtime and let you speak to them.

I said well, why didn't you tell me about this before you invited me and by now we were walking towards the middle of Madison campus where this crowd was gathering. And then they said, "Well, I hope you don't mind but we gave you a subject and we advertised it." And I said what's that? And they said, "Do Christians believe in sex?" I said, "What?" You gave me that to speak now to these and I tell you I don't do very well in those situations. And I'm praying where's Stuart? He does marvelously thinking on his feet.

Anyway, it was too late, we were there and I saw ahead of me my opposition. When you're doing open-air work, it's always good to find your opposition in the crowd. And he was a football player and he had girls hanging off him in every direction. And I thought there is my opposition. So I kept my eye on him and I simply defined love. I defined the love of God, I defined Eros, sexual-sensual love, and I defined human love. When I got to Eros and I defined it as the feeling too big for words, the young man interrupted me and said, "That's right! It's a feeling too big for words. But if it feels so good, it must be right."

And I said, "God, I need something to shut him up." I had no idea and into my head came a fact I'd read somewhere and I said, "Young man, listen to me. Are you aware that you have the physical capacity to populate a small village and feel good doing it?" He was not aware of this and nor was anyone else. Can this be right? I asked him. What I didn't know was God's timing that day. For the march that was getting ready to go from that particular place in Madison campus was against overpopulation! Yes! God was on my side.

Everybody turned and glared at this young man. How dare he go about populating small villages. Gave me a chance to speak into that. God-given appetites must have boundaries and the boundary for our wonderful God-given sensuality and sexuality is marriage. That's it. Anything outside of that is illegitimate as far as God is concerned. He wrote it in stone with His own finger. "Thou shalt not fornicate. Thou shalt not commit adultery."

And so it comes from the world around us and it comes from the world within us, our own sensual sexuality that is marred and tainted and fallen. And so giant temptation either hits us from outside and what we see, eye gate, or he hits us from our own desires. The world, the flesh, and the devil himself. And sometimes he doesn't bother going at you any other way, he just comes right in your face and says, "Worship me. Bow down. Give in. Get her. Sleep with her." Just like that.

Well, David was on the roof and it was all happening. He saw a woman who was very beautiful and the word very beautiful is only used a couple of times in the Bible. She was gorgeous. She was a knockout. It's used of Vashti, a heathen queen who was married to a heathen king. It's used of Esther, one of the most beautiful women in the world. And it's used of Bathsheba and she was traditionally known as a beauty in Israel. Isn't this Bathsheba the beautiful? This is Bathsheba the beautiful, David.

What was she doing on the roof? Ever thought of that? Well, she really wasn't on the roof. She was in the pool because the houses were all very close together and they had the flat roofs where everybody was walking around and doing their thing in the evening. And they also, if they were wealthy enough, had a pool in the courtyard. So if you're on the roof, you could see in the pool next door or over there. And here's this woman, naked in the pool or out of the pool. Skinny dipping if you wish.

And so we have David: lazy, lax, self-indulgent. And we have Bathsheba with all her clothes off over here. Well, there wasn't a commentary I read on this story, a Bible commentary, that didn't say she wasn't raped, she wasn't forced, she went willingly. And I believe it. But why? What were the steps into the pool for her? Loneliness. Her husband was out of town.

That can be pretty lonely. Ask me. For years, Stuart was out of town, 10 months of the year. Giant temptation sees his opportunity. She didn't know when he'd be back or if he would be back. I've no doubt she loved him. But she's lonely and she's beautiful and she's bored. Boredom says giant temptation, I'll take it. I've got her. I've got him. So he's lazy and she's lonely and bored. And did she know David was watching? Well, if David wasn't, she knew everybody else was, that she was careless, very careless doing what she was doing where she was doing it that day.

And she was willing, I believe. So what happened? I read it to you. He sent for her to get her. I hate that. He lay with her, went to bed with her. Everything's working together for giant temptation. And the baby is conceived. David now knows that somebody's going to be put to death for this. For in the law, those that commit adultery are stoned to death. Now whether they could have stoned a sitting king probably not. But they could have stoned Bathsheba.

Now he's in trouble and she is too. So she sends to him and says, "Protect me. You got me into this mess, now protect me." And so David begins the downhill walk and he sends for Uriah who comes from the battlefield. Did he get told about this? Nobody quite seems to know. Think of all the people that knew about it. The messengers that went to get her, the one that went to find out who she was, the ones that went to escort Bathsheba from the house to David's bed and in the morning take her back home again. How many people knew about it? And here comes the husband.

I think he probably knew. So when the king began to manipulate him into going home and having a night with his wife so the baby legitimately could be called his, he resisted. He didn't tell David, he just didn't go home, just slept with the soldiers at the gate. And so David was told the next morning he didn't go home. Oh my. He has him in again, says why didn't you go home? He says, "The ark of God is on the battlefield. Your servants are giving their lives."

And he didn't say your majesty what are you doing on the roof and what am I doing here? But he said, "I couldn't go home and lie with my wife when I should be back fighting the battles of the Lord." And so David gets him drunk the next day, hoping that he'll then go home and spend the night with Bathsheba. But Uriah is a better man drunk than David was sober. And he didn't do it.

And when David saw that his little plans weren't coming, guess what he did? He wrote his death warrant and he put it in a sealed piece of parchment and he gave it to Uriah and said, "Take this to Joab." And when Joab, the commander of the forces read it, it said, "Put him in the front of the battle and withdraw so that he can die." And Joab thought, "Oh, this king and master of mine can be as treacherous as the rest of us." And he went along with David's plan thinking, "I'll use this against him one day," which he did.

And the whole mess began. Uriah's killed. The message comes back from Joab, "Uriah, your servant, is dead." They wait two months, come back, he marries Bathsheba. And for best part of her pregnancy and a year after, he lives with all of that. And he thinks he's covered it up. And he thinks nobody knows.

Let me tell you, even if nobody else knew, even if Joab didn't know, even if Uriah didn't know, even if anybody else didn't know, God knew. That's the thing about sin, we forget. God knows. You think you're covering something up? Let me tell you something. It's all open in the eyes of Him with whom we have to do, and another of my memory verses: "All things are naked and open in the eyes of Him with whom we have to do."

He knew. Now next time I speak to you I'm going to take you through Psalm 51. Is there any sin too big for God to forgive? No. We all choose to sin but we do not choose the consequences of our sin. I'm going to deal with that next time. However, David wrote a psalm, 51, and that's what we're going to be talking about: how David came and repented and said, "Cleanse me, clean me up, I am so filthy, I feel so dirty. Cleanse me with hyssop and I shall be clean, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow." And then, "Restore the joy of my salvation."

No, there isn't any sin too big for God to forgive, but the repercussions go on forever. And God would spare us and those we love those things. So let me in this closing moment talk about getting off the roof and it's pretty simple. You remember the rules, you just say no, and you get off the roof. Could that be any more simple? You remember the rules. How can you remember what you've never memorized? How can you remember what you've never read?

That's why if you hear nothing else, will you decide today to start and hang your heart over this? Will you let it wash over you? Will you be a woman of this book? Will you be a man of this book, a boy of this book, a girl of this book? That's what I would wish out of everything I've said would happen. And you remember the rules, the 'do not's as God said. Do not, do not, do not. And you keep them. You say, "I'll do it. I'll obey you." As David had done until this moment for 50 years, bless his heart, he did that as best he could.

I babysat for my daughter for a week. They went to China, she and her husband, on a mission's trip. And as I arrived there, my daughter sat me down and said, "These are the rules. They know them, we've sat them down, told them, Nana, and keep them to it. These are the rules. These are Nana rules. These are their rules." And I said, "Yes," very obediently and I looked at these three gorgeous boys and I thought, "Lord, help me to help them to keep the rules."

So we had a wonderful week and I gave a little bit here and I bent a little bit there. I'm a Nana, you know. And they knew I was a Nana but they were good kids and they didn't push me at all. They were wonderful. Well, then my daughter comes back and after I've left, she says to the boys, "Well, did you keep the rules?" And they said, "Oh yes." And, "Did Nana tell you the rules and remind you of the rules?" "Oh yes, yes." And she said, "Well, what was it like?" They all said what it was like having me there. "Well, it was like having a substitute teacher."

I said, "What's that?" Well, I'm a teacher myself, I've subbed, I think I knew what he meant. You know when you go in as a sub, it's not your class and it's not your rules and you can bend a bit and that's what I did anyway when I was a sub. And I thought to myself, God is not a substitute teacher. Those rules are rules. And you don't stand there on the roof saying, "Well, He knows I'm lonely, He knows I'm a victim, He knows I'm this, He knows I'm that." Uh-uh. The rules are the rules.

So you remember the rules. You remember them. And you just say no. My heart goes out to our kids and our children's kids. And I look around and I look at the young women, gorgeous, beautiful young women. And you know what I want to say as a mom, as a grandmother, as a Christian so many times? In fact I don't want to say it, I want to scream it. Do you know what it is? I'll tell you: Put some clothes on! That's what I want to say.

And I don't know if the young women understand what they're doing to the boys. And of course there's other things the other way. But specifically for our girls, Stuart and I were taking a walk and down this forest path came a young couple. They looked teenagers or a little bit older, they were holding hands. And at first glance coming down this forest path, I honestly thought she was naked. I didn't see any bit of her clothing. Then as we got near I thought, "Oh yes, she's got a wisp here and a wisp there," you know.

And I said to Stuart, "Look at this, he doesn't stand a chance." And Stuart said, "Really? I think he stands a very good chance!" Right. We were both right, right? What's the matter with Bathsheba? She needs to put some clothes on basically. She was careless. Maybe it was deliberate and maybe it wasn't. And I don't think the kids understand. Everybody's doing it. Everybody's buying it.

But you just say no even when you don't stand a chance. When it's that hard. When the boy or the girl is making it as difficult as possible to resist. You just say no and you get off the roof. You look for the way out. Now in closing I want to read you something from a very wonderful young preacher. His name's Peter Briscoe and he was preaching a series through Proverbs and he was dealing with sexual purity. And this story is so wonderful and just what I want to finish this. I'm just going to read it to you from the transcript.

A 19-year-old young man, he's setting up a case study for his congregation. He said, "I want to close by setting up a case study. Think about this. A 19-year-old young man is dating a 20-year-old girl and after a college basketball game, he and his best friend on the team are given Valentine cards for their girlfriends. The card leads them on a scavenger hunt driving all over the city of Minneapolis. The hunt ends at a hotel room on the first floor of a nice establishment on the north side of town. The young men go inside and there are balloons and ribbons and romantic music and there's cake and ice cream. And their girlfriends yell, 'Happy Valentine's Day!' as they enter the room."

And after chatting and laughing for a while and playing some board games, one of the young men excuses himself and goes to the restroom. When he comes out, the other couple has left. The lights have been turned down, his girlfriend is in the bed, and all her clothes are on the floor. What does the young man do? Peter has posed this scenario. Well then Pete goes on to describe the wise man and the fool which is what he's preaching about. What is wisdom? Spiritual intelligence lent to us by God to know what to do.

And then Pete says, "So what did I do?" Yes, he says, this isn't a case study, this really happened to me when I was in college in Minnesota. I came out of the bathroom, I find myself in this situation and I'm going to walk you through what took place. I had three thoughts hit my mind at once. I didn't know I was capable of thinking three things at once but I was. The first thought was run, Pete, run, run, run. So that was going on while my other two thoughts popped in.

The next thought was I was able to picture my mom and my dad. I saw their faces as I closed my eyes and I reminded myself that if I did what I'll be honest with you folks he said I wanted to do, if I did it, it would affect them. It would be going against what they always taught me and what they poured into my life. And the third thought which came into my mind was a verse that I'd memorized because my youth pastor made us. 'There has no temptation taken you, Pete, that such is common to man. But God is faithful and He won't allow you to be tempted above that you're able but will make the way to escape.'

And I opened my eyes and there was the door and I thought, 'That's the way. Out there.' And all these three thoughts hit me at once and I started to run, literally, to the door. And I whipped it open and I was in the parking lot and I sprinted to my car and I couldn't get my keys. And I was trying to get them in the door and I got in the door and I rode home as fast as I could. I got to my dorm room and I sat on my bed and I wept. I was so scared. I had nearly got in the bed.

And I got on the phone and I talked to my dad. And I told him what had just happened. And I told him how scared I was. And we talked and oh, oh, oh, he says, I look back on that and I think you know that for a 19-year-old kid I made a wise decision that day. I'm absolutely convinced the Holy Spirit grabbed me and pulled me out of that room. And I'm so glad He did because my life is better now because He did. My marriage now is better because He did. And what I want you to understand is all this biblical stuff on purity that I'm throwing at you today, it really applies to life.

And you are going to find yourself in a bunch of situations this week, perhaps not as graphic nor that defining, but a bunch of situations nevertheless where you have to make a decision. Boy and girl, man and woman, grandparents, middle-aged, I don't care. All of us there will be a roof that we stand on. And all of us will make a decision whether to stay there and go along with giant temptation or get off the roof. Pete says the decision you make and the action you take will dictate whether you are a fool or a wise man.

God wants us to be wise men and women and wise boys and girls. He doesn't want us to be a fool. Doesn't want us to be a fool. Pray with me if you will. And I want us just to have a few moments of silence. It's about you and God and God and you. Or maybe you and your children, you and your wife or your husband. You know who it's about. And I just want you to go there.

Maybe you have to go back to the time you didn't get off the roof or maybe you have to go back just to yesterday when the boss invited you out for lunch and you're married and you're tempted. You want to go. Whatever. Now what are you going to do? Would you talk to God about this?

Hear our prayers, dear Lord. Even if there are no words, read the language of our longing and answer us. Some of us we are in deep distress, feel as guilty as hell. And we are. And we need to know that You can cleanse us from sin and forgive us. Give us a whole new start. God brought us here to hear this message. How kind and how grace-filled is God to do that and warn us and show us exactly where we are. And we need to get off the roof but we don't know how. We don't think we have the strength and we need help.

And others of us are thinking of our children and our grandchildren. Our heart is sad or aching or feeling pretty helpless and out of control. And we bring those beautiful young people to You, Lord, and bring them into the throne room and say, "Oh God, help. Help our children. Help our grandchildren. Help them stay pure." Help us to do our part on our knees for our family. Show us how.

Thank You for the family of God who wants to help each other and reach out and strengthen each other for the battle. Now we commit this to You in Jesus' name. Amen.