Introduction

How many of you are scared of heights?

My dad and another pastor were going to a conference in Florida, and Dad found flights for less than $100. He said, “I would rather walk. I believe Jesus’ words when he said, ‘Low I am with you always!’”

For most people, it’s not so much when you’re in a plane as when you’re high off the ground but can still see the ground, when the possibility of falling is real.

Kay’s family here this morning (Jerry & Joan, Mark & Mariah, Isaac, Ella-Mae, Cheryl-Rae) A couple years ago her sister & BIL Ann & Jason and their two kids came to visit us around this time, they were here for our Good Friday service.

While they were here, we took them to Garden of the Gods. We’d already been past Camel Rock and were at the spot where you look back at it, where you can see that it looks like a camel, and we waved at some people on the other side.

Nathaniel (around Ben’s age) looked across there, and he said, “Dad, can I run and jump from here to there?”

Today we’re going to look at the story of someone who was even more careless, who didn’t even realize that he was near a cliff before he walked right off.

His name is David.

In the spring when kings march out to war, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah, but David remained in Jerusalem.
One evening David got up from his bed and strolled around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing—a very beautiful woman. So David sent someone to inquire about her, and he said, “Isn’t this Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam and wife of Uriah the Hethite?”
David sent messengers to get her, and when she came to him, he slept with her. Now she had just been purifying herself from her uncleanness. Afterward, she returned home. The woman conceived and sent word to inform David, “I am pregnant.”
2 Samuel 11:1–5

Stunned silence. So sad.

To use David’s own words from just a few weeks ago,
“How the mighty have fallen!”

Recap

The title of this series is Rise & Fall, and we’ve seen the rise/fall of Samuel, of Saul, and now of David.

Last week we were in C9, where we saw David show God’s faithful, Kingdom kindness to Mephibosheth. Unfortunately, C9 was the peak of David’s life and reign, and it’s all downhill from here.

Up until this point, King David has been
the antithesis of King Saul in every way.

But in this story, he becomes progressively more and more Saul-like—starting with the fact that he’s willing to let someone else go fight the battles for him.

Three things I want us to learn about the cliffs of sin in our lives from this lamentable story this morning. Here’s the first one…

1. Sin will sneak up on you.

David was in the wrong place at the wrong time… because of wrong decisions.

Taking a stroll on the roof was the equivalent of going off the trail at Garden of the Gods. You have to maintain your situational awareness, because there’s always a cliff.

There’s always a cliff. Always.

Extra Details

David’s in his late forties at this point.
He’s spent so many years on the run, in battle; he’s had a hard life.

“I deserve to take it easy for a little while. All they’re doing is laying siege to Rabbah, just standing around for months on end. What’s the big deal?”
- I don’t want to go further than the text does—maybe letting Joab be his general and lead the troops isn’t the worst thing ever, but he’s commander-in-chief.
- from the way it’s pointed out specifically by the narrator in this story, it’s clear that he’s drawing our attention to the fact that “when kings go out to march… David was sitting.”
- Rest isn’t a bad thing; laziness is.
Notice what time he’s getting out of bed? Evening.
- Unless your sick or working the night shift,
  that’s never a good idea.
David’s “strolling” while his troops are “marching”.

David the warrior had
become David the vacationer.
J.D. Greear

A lot of the time, our problem is not so
much a lustful body as it is a bored soul.

Application

Stay off the balcony—it’s actually a cliff!

The easiest way to fall off a cliff is to be unaware that there is one, to be careless. There’s always a cliff. Always.

The Flesh • we’ll talk about this more in a minute, but as long as that old man still resides within us, we have a built-in cliff in our own hearts.
The World • it has a way of dragging you down, wearing you out, making you vulnerable. And then, offers a solution that will make things worse, not better.
- Don’t believe me? Go home and watch Creighton vs San Diego State, or Miami vs Texas this afternoon, and see how many commercials have “You deserve this.” as their underlying motivation.
The Devil • he’s effective, but he’s not innovative. Been doing the same thing, playing on the same patterns since the beginning of time.

He will take care to sing your lullaby and rock
your cradle if you want to sleep, for he loves
to see God’s warriors not on the alert.
Charles Spurgeon

Are you aware of when/where/how you are the most vulnerable?

If the answer is no, you’re not paying enough attention. This is not a game, we’re talking about life and death here. You need to know where your personal cliffs are located.

And while it’s the topic of this story, it doesn’t apply just to sexual sin, but any kind of brokenness you’re dealing with.

Some days are not good days, right? Feels like nothing’s going right, like you are the worst person, worst spouse, worst parent, worst Christian ever.

So you decided to take a stroll on the rooftop of social media, take a stroll on the rooftop, look over the fence and peer into other people’s lives.

Does it bring your closer to God or further away?
Do you feel more content or less?

This may be the most important part of the message for some of you. You need to sit down, figure out where you’re the weakest, and take concrete steps to intentionally avoid those cliffs.

danger: you’ll almost always be able to rationalize what you’re doing.
some of these things may be awkward, may make other people roll their eyes, argue with you about why it’s not a big deal.
some people might call it legalism. Call it what you want, it’s just knowing the power of sin and the weakness of me. Personal legalisms.

David had gotten used to having the best of everything, and he didn’t want to give it up to go fight the Lord’s battles. He had the finest of food, the finest house, the finest furnishings, the finest service.

And he looks down and sees a woman
who is fiiiine, and he will have her, too.

Bathsheba

This story’s bad enough at first glance, but the
more you dig into it, the more insidious it gets.

v3: she’s a person • She has a name, David. She’s someone’s daughter, someone’s wife.

Not an object for your pleasure, not a conquest for you to triumph over. She’s not just “the woman”, her name is Bathsheba.
almost every sin against another person starts with dehumanizing them… and ends up dehumanizing us in the process.

v3: she’s Uriah’s wife • and that’s a name David knows. We learn in C28 that he was part of David’s special forces known as The Thirty. He’s a part of David’s Seal Team Six.

And most of these guys had joined up with David in the wilderness. Uriah’s one of his brothers, fought side by side with him, most likely for years.

v4: she’s purifying herself • under the ceremonial law, blood was a very big deal. It’s representative of life, of sacrifice. So whenever someone bled, they would be ceremonially unclean.

And that obviously include women every month or so. Seven days after the last day of their period, they would have to do a ceremonial washing and offer a small sacrifice so that they could go into the temple and worship again.

That little phrase makes David’s sin so much worse. She’s not skinny dipping in a rooftop hot tub. If she’s ceremonially washing herself, there’s a good chance she wasn’t even naked!

But worse yet, David has perverted her worship. She’s following the Law of God, while he’s looking over the fence, breaking it.

Over the years, Bathsheba has been depicted in a very negative way, I think unfairly based on the text. Like if you’ve seen the movie David & Bathsheba with Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward back in 1951, Bathsheba’s portrayed as some kind of seductress, purposely tempting David.

The text doesn’t even hint at that. In fact, just the opposite. V4, “David sent messengers to get her,” ESV, “took her”

He didn’t invite her, He didn’t woo her, he didn’t lure her, he didn’t trick her. He took her. The description is all one-sided.
John Piper

In the next chapter we get God’s perspective on the situation via Nathan’s parable, in which Bathsheba is portrayed not only as a pet lamb, but a pet lamb who was then taken, killed, and eaten.

Bathsheba goes home, but nothing’s
ever the same again. For her, or for David.

Another 6-7 weeks go by, (David’s still just chillin’, apparently), when he gets the news that leaves him reeling: “I am pregnant.”

Things just got a lot more complicated.

Sin sneaks up on you. When you’re least expecting it, when you feel safetst, when you let your guard down, when you’re just taking a spiritual stroll, you’ll find yourself stepping off a cliff.

Sin sneaks up on you.

2. Sin is a slippery slope.

Part of the reason we should be so careful is that sin is sneaky, and once you start to slip, it’s a long, slow, painful slide.

David sent orders to Joab: “Send me Uriah the Hethite.” So Joab sent Uriah to David. When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab and the troops were doing and how the war was going. Then he said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet.” So Uriah left the palace, and a gift from the king followed him. But Uriah slept at the door of the palace with all his master’s servants; he did not go down to his house.
When it was reported to David, “Uriah didn’t go home,” David questioned Uriah, “Haven’t you just come from a journey? Why didn’t you go home?”
Uriah answered David, “The ark, Israel, and Judah are dwelling in tents, and my master Joab and his soldiers are camping in the open field. How can I enter my house to eat and drink and sleep with my wife? As surely as you live and by your life, I will not do this!”
“Stay here today also,” David said to Uriah, “and tomorrow I will send you back.” So Uriah stayed in Jerusalem that day and the next. Then David invited Uriah to eat and drink with him, and David got him drunk. He went out in the evening to lie down on his cot with his master’s servants, but he did not go home.
The next morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. In the letter he wrote:
Put Uriah at the front of the fiercest fighting, then withdraw from him so that he is struck down and dies.
2 Samuel 11:6–15

Hasn’t that proven true in your own life? Before you know what happened, your laying broken at the bottom of a ravine, looking up at where you were just standing/strolling.

This is the pattern sin almost always follows. You don’t just dive off the cliff for no reason.

Sin happens, but it rarely just happens.
Bob Deffinbaugh

As Christians, intellectually we ascent to the idea that we are sinners. But our actions and even our words expose the double standard that’s active in our hearts—“I’m a sinner, but not that bad of a sinner.”

That’s nothing more than overconfidence in our capacity to resist, and an underestimation of our own propensity toward evil.

when we say things like “How could he?”, we’re showing what we really believe about the human heart.
we all have some amount of remaining weakness in our hearts, and we’ll never know how far we might fall in the right situation.

The seeds of every sin are latent in our own hearts, and they only need occassion or carelessness… to put forth an abundant crop.
F.B. Meyer

Apart from the sustaining grace of God, we can all far very far, very quickly.

Pastor Sex Scandals

SBC, Ravi Zacharias, “How could they?!”

How could David?

It starts from a place of thinking it could never happen to them, never happen to me, never happen to you.

When you begin to say, “I could never…”, then you’ve already taken the first step in your fally. Don’t be surprised at what you are capable of.
Dale Ralph Davis

The Coverup

In particular if you are a believer, trying to cover up your sin may be the worst idea ever!

With every step, David got more and more desparate and unhinged.

Our idea of freedom is “I can do whatever I want with no restraints. I’m in complete control of my own life.” Sexual freedom.

Does David look free to you? Is David happier before the events of this chapter, or after?

Fish, freedom from water. If you free that fish from the river, it will be free alright, free to do exactly one thing: die.

But put that fish back into the water (in time!), and you’ll see what a fish that’s truly free looks like. It’ll swim await like lightning.

Fish are only free in the water, and we’re only free within the restrictions God has designed us for, for our good.

The more you try to cover up your sin, the more of a stronghold it will have in your life. It’s like tryinging to grab hold of the rocks as you slide down the slippery slope. It’s never enough to stop you, you just end up hurting yourself even more.

If even King David—the man after God’s own heart—failed in such an obvious way, then what hope do any of us have?

When you ask that question, you’re starting to read the Bible correctly.

“All your good guys are bad guys!” Right… except for one!

Sin will sneak up on you.
Sin is a slippery slope.

3. Sin must be strangled out by a greater love.

If David could fall like this, how to we escape?

If the seed of every sin lies dormant in our hearts, then the thing to do is to keep them from growing by strangling them out, like a tree strangled out by a vine.

Don’t go grocery shopping when you’re hungry.

You can’t defeat it on your own.

A lot of people will try to conquer their lusts by their own willpower, by white knuckling it. It’ll never work in the long term

We need to be like an athlete who disciplines their body, who says “No!” to all kinds of lesser pleasures, because they’re brought under the submission of a stronger drive/desire/passion.

Old country preacher, “Sin ain’t fun!”

If sin ain’t fun, you ain’t doing it right!

We don’t rush toward sin because it’s painful, but so promising.

I could stand here and talk about the dangers of sin. I could give you examples of lives that have been ruined. I could give you stats on the prevalence and effects of pornography on both the culture and the church.

And maybe, if I’m super lucky and effective, I might convince 1-2 people to try again to give it up.

But what happens in a couple weeks when you’ve had a really rough day and so has your spouse, you get in an argument, he/she really hurts you. You can’t sleep, so you take a stroll on the rooftop of your phone or the TV.

The only thing that will make a difference in that moment is a heart that has been overcome by a greater drive, a greater love.

It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling aobut with drink and sex and anmbition when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased!
C.S. Lewis

Conclusion

Four categories of people I want to address, four reactions:

1. David in the palace/on the rooftop

You’re not there yet, but you can feel yourself letting your guard down.

Don’t overestimate the security of your footing, or underestimate the danger that is always present. Sin will sneak up on you.

Quit playing Russian roulette with your life and your family.

Repent of your apathetic heart toward God, and then turn and run toward him (and your spouse)

2. David halfway through the chapter

You’ve gotten too curious, too close to the edge, through this whole message, your spirit and maybe even your body has felt like your in a freefall. You’ve been trying to cover it up, trying to grab ahold of anything that can stop your slide.

There is something, one thing, and it’s the nail-scarred hand of Jesus, reaching out to you this morning to grab you.

His love for you means that you won’t be able to hide it or cover it up.

Like father bending down and saying, “I love you too much to let you act like that.”

When I kept silent, my bones became brittle
from my groaning all day long.
For day and night your hand was heavy on me;
my strength was drained
as in the summer’s heat.
Psalms 32:3–4

God, create a clean heart for me
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not banish me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.
Psalms 51:10–11

3. David after this chapter

We’ll deal with David’s confrontation and repentance next week, but while God forgives him, he has to live with the consequences the rest of his life. I’m sure he dealt with the guilt the rest of his life, too.

Maybe that’s you, and this morning has been a hard reminder of all that happened back then, because you try your best to not think about it. When you do, all the feelings of guilt and shame coming flooding back. That’s what Satan wants to do, to uncover what Jesus’ blood already covered long ago.

Don’t let him. If you’ve confessed, repented, your life in Christ is a trophy of his grace. He took the shame, so don’t grab it back from him.

4. Uriah & Bathsheba

Someone used you and discarded you.

This kind of message is hard for you to hear because you’ve been dealing with the aftermath of something you didn’t sign up for, didn’t go looking for.

Shame that isn’t even yours is still hanging over your head. Like Bathsheba, mourning what you’ve lost.

The Lord considered what David had done to be evil.
2 Samuel 11:27

God saw it, it displeased him, and he will bring justice.

The cross not only offers forgiveness for sinners, it proimses healing for sufferers, too.

Invitation

Come and pray for yourself, for others, for your kids,

Uphold me according to your promise, that I may live… Hold me up, that I may be safe
Psalms 119:116–117, ESV

Don’t hesitate to come because of what people will think. Think of what God will think.

We’ve seen your glory, look away. Shine into our night.