Calvary Lutheran Church

August 27, 2017

May the God of peace fill you with all joy in believing. Amen.

2 Samuel 11 and 12

Dear Christian friends:

College can be a wonderful experience. I know, I attended four different colleges and a seminary over a period of 10 years, switching my major three times. I wouldn’t advise anyone else doing it that way, but I don’t regret it one bit. And I probably would have continued for who knows how long had not my funding been abruptly cut off after seminary from the Diana Piepenbrink Scholarship Fund.

College is the pursuit of knowledge. It is the search for reality. Because some things in this life just always hold true. We call them the “principles” or “axioms” of life, and every field of knowledge has them, whether you are talking about mathematics or the sciences or economics or the humanities. And the person who masters these principles can use them to his advantage--like earning a living, influencing others, and living a more fulfilling life.

This morning I want speak to you about a field of knowledge with which you are all too familiar. It, too, can be studied because it follows certain principles and axioms which will always hold true, and you don’t have to go to college to learn them. I’m talking about the reality of sin. Sin, by far, has the greatest impact in our lives. It is the greatest inhibitor to our relationship with God, not to mention one another. The more we know about sin, the more it can be managed, and, with the Lord’s direct intervention, even conquered. If we could learn to conquer just one habitual sin here today, what a difference it would make in our lives.

That is our goal this morning and next Sunday morning: to learn the basic principles of sin with the purpose of overcoming them. We might call this morning:

SIN 101—AN INTRODUCTORY COURSE

Then next Sunday: Sin 202—AN ADVANCED COURSE

My text for both Sundays is 2 Samuel chapters 11 and 12. It is the account of David and Bathsheba. There are seven basic principles of sin in this account. This morning I want to cover four of them, and then next Sunday we will examine the other three.

Principle #1: Sin comes to all of us and especially attacks us at our weakest point. The psalmist wrote, “Everyone has turned away, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one” (Psalm 53:3). The story is told of Martin Luther offering to give a friend a large sum of money if he would not sin for the next five minutes. The friend eagerly agreed. Luther starting timing him. After just a few seconds, the friend said, “You can stop now, I give up. Shortly after you started timing me, thoughts immediately came to mind of what I was all going to buy with all that money.” Yes, the sin of greed had set in almost immediately. Remember, sin is not just the evil we do, say, and think called “sins of commission,” but it is also the good we fail to do called “sins of omission,” like when we omit to put God first in our lives or to love our neighbor as ourselves. This friend of Luther omitted to think of ways he could use the money to help others.

But also, each one of us has certain areas of moral and spiritual weakness where we are more likely to give in to sin. For Moses it was lack of trust in the Lord, “Send someone else to Egypt, Lord, you got the wrong man.” For Peter it was pride, “Even if I have to die with you, Jesus, I will not forsake you.” For Judas it was love of money. John writes, “as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it” (John 12:6).

What is your spiritual or moral weakness? Do you even know? The devil does. Remember, the devil is like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. He is looking for weaknesses. What we need to do is recognize those weaknesses ourselves—that is the beginning of overcoming the sin. But that is not always easy, because they may change with age and circumstances.

For example, during the childhood years the weakness may be sins of selfishness and lying. For teens and young adults it is usually the sins of sexual passion and rebellion from authority. For middle agers it is the sin of worldly ambition and greed. And you might think that the older you get the less you are affected by sin. Not so. I know I live with seniors, and I am one. For seniors there is a plethora of sins like worry, discontent, complaining, pride, and sometimes the sin of just plain boredom. Seniors have experienced it all. The challenges of life are gone, boredom sets in, and with it sin.

That was David’s problem. David was not yet a senior, but in 2 Samuel 11 the time had long passed when it was said of David that “he was a youth and ruddy.” David was now king of a powerful nation. David’s fall came later in life when things were going very well for him. Practically all his wars had been fought and won. Even the war with the Ammonites was virtually over. Only a “mopping-up operation” remained. So one would expect to find David in daily devotion to his Lord in loving gratitude, since it was the Lord who had now given him “rest from all his enemies.” Yet it is just such circumstances of earthly ease that Satan often uses to bring about the fall of God’s children. David had it all. Yet sin came to him as it does to us all. David had a spiritual and moral weak spot, and when the circumstances were right, it was attacked.

Principle #2: Sin feeds on itself with the ultimate goal of total ruin. James wrote, “Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death” (James 1:15). Sin is like a chain reaction which feeds on itself. It is sort of like an atomic bomb. Heavy atoms such as uranium and plutonium are struck by a neutron and caused to split, releasing tremendous energy. But the splitting of the heavy atom releases more neutrons, which are then available to split other atoms and a so-called “chain reaction” occurs.

David’s downfall started with just an evil neutron. It was a thought in his mind. But all sin starts with a simple thought. David, from his roof top, saw Bathsheba bathing, and he wanted her. His first sin was lust. Bathsheba was married to Uriah, but he was off fighting the king’s enemies. So this looked like the perfect opportunity. David had her brought to his chambers and slept with her. His second sin was adultery.

Now it looks so innocent on television and the movies. So they had sex together. So what! He seduced her, and she willingly participated. So what! Two consenting adults simply had an affair. It is over, forgotten, and no one was hurt.

But principle #2 is that sin doesn’t stop by itself. Rather it feeds on itself like an atomic bomb. And unless checked at once by honest confession and repentance, it will surely lead to other sins and ultimately to death. That’s reality.

In David’s case, it happened this way: Bathsheba became pregnant. Most unfortunate because the penalty for illicit sex according to the Mosaic Law was death. Now David as king was probably immune from prosecution, but Bathsheba was not. And he felt a certain responsibility to her. So a cover-up began. He ordered the husband, Uriah, immediately home from the front, so that he would have sex with his wife and the child could appear to be his. Clever idea especially since David didn’t have to worry about DNA testing at that time. His third sin was deception.

But as is usually the case, the providence of God works counter to the plans of sinners. Uriah came back to Jerusalem but refused to go home to his wife. Since his fellow soldiers could not be home with their wives, Uriah refused to go home to his. Just David’s luck, he ends up with a patriotic Israelite. David next tried to get him drunk, so he wouldn’t think so much of his patriotic duties and more of himself. But even that didn’t work.

Finally, David saw only one alternative—send Uriah back to the front and make sure he dies on the battle field. Then Bathsheba would be free to be David’s wife, and he could have his own child. His fourth sin was murder. Problem solved. So he went from simple lust to adultery to deception to murder. One sin led to another until tender-hearted David became a monster of cruelty.

So where was David’s conscience all this time? During all the plotting and planning, and for 12-months after taking Bathsheba as his wife, how could a man of God like David live with himself? We would have thought him to go mad under the judgment of adultery and murder. His silence seems almost inconceivable to us.

Principle #3: One mystery of sin is its total ability to blind. Paul wrote, “They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts” (Ephesians 4:18). No one’s sins escape us more than our own; and of them the most glaring totally escape us. A man may tell a lie so often that at last he comes to believe it himself. And the main cause of this blinding effect of sin is the love of self. We say that love is blind: but self-love is the blindest of all.

David may have flattered himself with the thought, “I am the king. I can have anything I want. Bathsheba is very beautiful. So I want her.” Or, he may have said, “I didn’t kill Uriah. I indeed ordered him to be put in a place of danger, but someone had to stand in the forefront of the battle, why not him?” Or, he may have soothed his conscience with the notion that he was protecting Bathsheba from a cruel punishment. Who knows what went on in David’s mind? But somehow he was able to talk himself into thinking that he wasn’t sinning, and that his actions under the circumstances were justified.

Don’t underestimate the blindness of sin. We can fool ourselves just as David did. And we can think that since no one else knows anything about it; since there is a euphemistic term to describe it like “sleeping together” or “alternative lifestyle,” or “freedom to choose;” or “everyone else is doing it,” that therefore, God is deceived too. He is not. Sooner or later reality strikes, and God’s verdict against sin comes upon us a like a ton of bricks. In David’s case it was the words of the prophet Nathan, “You are the man. You are the one who denied a poor shepherd of his one and only ewe lamb which he loved.”

Oh, how we need to say with the psalmist, “Teach me your way, O Lord; lead me in a straight path, for I know nothing as I ought to know. Search me, O God, and know my heart, test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:24). And “the way everlasting” is repentance that leads to forgiveness.

The story is told of Charles Spurgeon, perhaps the greatest preacher of all time, who was crossing a busy street when he stopped right in the middle. The horses and carriages had to swerve around him, just missing him. Finally, he proceeded to the other side. Someone asked him why he stopped in the middle of the street. He replied, “I thought of sin I had committed, and I didn’t want to wait until I got to the other side to confess it.” Immediate repentance leads to the way everlasting, that is, forgiveness.

Principle #4. Even the greatest sins have their end in Christ. Paul wrote to the Galatians, “For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God” (Galatians 2:19). What does Paul mean when he says, “I died to the law?” He explains in the next verse, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live” (Galatians 2:20). Paul himself was not crucified with Christ, but his sins were. When Christ died on the cross, in a sense we can say that we died there with him. Oh, physically we were not there, but our sins were. Christ was paying for them. And after describing how he died, Paul goes on to describe how he lived, “Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

For 12-months God allowed David to live with his self-deception and flimsy excuses. But then he sent the prophet Nathan, and Nathan had two messages for David. The first was this, “You shall die, and there is no help or escape.” And secondly, “You shall not die, you are forgiven.” Now tell me, how can those two statements be understood so that both are true? The answer is: only one way—in Christ—with Christ we died, and in Christ we live.

When we have faith to believe that we have sinned and deserve death, but that God for Jesus’ sake forgives us our sin, then God steps in. He bursts into our soul, bringing forgiveness, cleansing, and peace. Paul wrote, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (Galatians 6:15).

At Fort Wayne Bible College some years back, the chapel speaker canceled at the last minute. So President Wesley Gerig, in order to fill time, called for students to come forward and publicly confess their sins. At first no one did. Then a few came up, then many more. Some students waited in line two hours to confess sins like cheating, hatefulness, indulging in worldly practices, and even criticism of campus food. One student confirmed: “I’ve been here three years and it’s about time I got straightened out.” Asked why so many young people were getting “straightened out” now, one student, Grant Hoatson replied, “They’re just tired of feeling ashamed.”

Let me be like Nathan for a moment and say, “You are the man.” “You are the woman.” “You are the child.” You are living in denial of your sin. Are you tired of feeling ashamed, guilty? Are you ready for a new creation, a new life in Christ? Then put off the old—repent of your sin, confess it—and live the new life which leads to the way everlasting.

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Calvary Lutheran Church

August 27, 2017

Sin 101: An Introductory Course