temptation

Once you have disobeyed in one area …
it is easy to compromise in another. (Jim Laffoon)

Have you ever noticed this truth play out in your life?  Maybe you started entertaining thoughts in your mind even though you knew you shouldn’t.  At first you felt the Holy Spirit nudging you to capture those thoughts, but over time the gentle nudging stopped and you were turned over to your own choices.

As humans we often believe if we cross over some invisible line in the sand, we might as well move forward.   Right?  It is nothing short of a trap from the enemy.

Do you remember the story of King David and Bathsheba?

2 Samuel 11:2-3
One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, “She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.”

With David, it started with a glance.  This was a man who walked with God and was even considered a man after God’s own heart — yet when he saw Bathsheba in her nakedness he didn’t turn away.  The glance became a stare.  The stare became an obsession.  He HAD to know her.

Once you have disobeyed in one area …
it is easy to compromise in another.

Things went from bad to worse …

2 Samuel 11:4-5
Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness.)  Then she went back home. The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, “I am pregnant.”

The stare, the obsession, the meeting, the sin of adultery … now a child is involved.   Disobedience led from one compromise to the next.   David compromised his character and he compromised his relationship with God.   And as the leader of a nation, he knew how desperately he needed God.

The compromise led to murder.  It started with a glance.

2 Samuel 11:14-16
 In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. In it he wrote, “Put Uriah out in front where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die.”

So while Joab had the city under siege, he put Uriah at a place where he knew the strongest defenders were.  When the men of the city came out and fought against Joab, some of the men in David’s army fell; moreover, Uriah the Hittite died.

David attempted to have Uriah leave the battlefield and go home to his wife Bathsheba so that the pregnancy could appear to be from her husband.  His first plan failed because Uriah was a man of honor and refused to go home to his wife while his men were still fighting the battle.   In David’s compromising mind … the next step was to kill Uriah.

This is the same David who took out the giant Goliath.   This is the same David who wouldn’t dare touch God’s anointed when King Saul was trying to KILL him.  Do you remember?  

David’s compromise started him on a downward spiral.  That one glance that was entertained now led to murder.  Even then, David wasn’t remorseful for his sin.    Uriah died and David brought Bathsheba into his own house and she bore him a son.   But … they didn’t live happily ever after.

God sent the prophet Nathan with a message.

2 Samuel 12:1-12
The Lord sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.

“Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”

David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die!   He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”

Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul.   I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you all Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more.  Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in His eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised Me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.’

 “This is what the Lord says: ‘Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity on you. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will sleep with your wives in broad daylight. You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel.’”

It was easy for David to get up on his “high horse” and pronounce judgment on what he thought was the sin of someone else.   Isn’t that easy for us to do as well even though we are just as guilty?   But alas, God was able to get His message through to King David through the trusted prophet Nathan.  It was THEN … after all of the time that David had to repent and didn’t, his eyes were opened to his sin and he repented.

2 Samuel 11:13-14
Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”

Nathan replied, “The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die. But because by doing this you have shown utter contempt for the Lord, the son born to you will die.”

David pleaded with the Lord to save his son, but on the 7th day the boy died.   But even after everything David did — God still loved him.  During the grieving over the death of that son, Bathsheba conceived and gave birth to Solomon!  Now we all know what a wise man of God he became.  So not all was lost, but that first disobedience led to more and more until many lives were changed.    Trust me, David knew hardship after his sin, there were consequences.   Just to name a few … David’s lust was passed down to his son Amnon who in turn raped his own sister Tamar.  Then David’s son Absolom killed his brother Amnon for what he had done to his sister.  Later, Absolom tried to overthrow his own father from the throne.

Yes, it all started with a glance …

I can look back over my own life and see areas where I disobeyed and opened doors to compromise.  Can you?

I pray each of us will clearly hear and then following the gentle warning the Holy Spirit gives us when we entertain that first glance, thought, or action BEFORE we compromise.

Thanks for visiting me today.