‘I’M ONLY HUMAN’. AND SO WHAT?!

David was the beloved of the Lord. He must have been melancholic in terms of temperaments – very sentimental, very passionate, just very melancholic. He was largely a godly fellow; walked in the ways of God, his soul panted for God like a deer panted for water brooks. This is going to be long. Hold tight.

So it so happens that this very driven man who is supposed to be on the battlefield at war with the army of Israel, jumps up from his bed one evening and decides of all the places in his huge palace, he wants to take a stroll on his roof. Building must have been really high, ‘cos he gets there, looks down and sees a very beautiful woman taking a bath. You know how the movies depict them sloowwllyy rubbing their backs with a very foamy sponge? Yesss, like that. Now this was the point where David should have panted for those water brooks, or ran back to the castle for a chilled glass of freshly pressed wine and summoned the Queen to fulfill righteousness 🌚 But Bra Dave looks again. And again! If Bathsheba was having one of those luxurious baths, then she’s probably still bathing as David sends someone to find out who she is. Someone says, “Oh, that’s Bathsheba, Uriah’s WIFE.” Naah David doesn’t hear the last bit. Never! In any case Uriah has been at war for a while. Knowing what was about to go down, David reckons one messenger isn’t enough to summon this gem, so he sends several messengers to go fetch her. I’m sure Bathsheba is shook at this point – like whyyy is the King summoning me? She meets him and realizes it’s the man in the King who’s calling her, not the King the King🌚. So David calms the raging storm in his pants with Bathsheba, and bids her farewell.

Fast forward a little over a month, Bathsheba has had morning sickness for a while now. I’d give a penny to know what David is thinking when he’s told ‘Your Highness, Bathsheba requests to be in thy presence one more time.’ 😆So Bathsheba appears, and well well well…there’s news. ‘Your Highness, thy servant has taken seed’. David’s mind is racing ‘cos he forgot this was a likely outcome. The storm was too raging at the time to think! He dismisses Bathsheba, and almost immediately, without any consultation, he gets a brilliant idea. How about getting this Uriah dude to come have sex with his wife, and then all this mess goes away. Bingo! That’s it!

So Bra David sends for Uriah. ‘Yo fam! How are you doing? How are my people doing? How’s the war going?’ Uriah is thinking ‘Ummmm what’s happening here?? 😳’ But then again he’s thinking, ‘maybe I’m doing really well on the battlefield. 🤷‍♂ Maybe I got noticed?? I don’t know but this is g-reeaat! 🤩 ‘  David says, ‘you deserve a break. Go down to your house and wash your feet.’ Yeah right 🙄 He knows this man must be on fayaaa 🔥😂 and it’s definitely not for the Lord; it ‘must to’ happen tonight! So Uriah leaves and David even makes sure a gift of food follows him. Trying to cut down the time wastage so Bathsheba wouldn’t have to cook huh? 🌚 But this guy doesn’t go home! He stays with David’s guards at the palace gates! Oh I’d be so pissed if I were Bathsheba! Like…just come say ‘hey baby’ and go back? 🤷‍♀ So David says, ‘yo fam! didn’t come from a long journey? Go home!!!’ Uriah is very probably trying to impress David, and frustrating him at the same time, or is probably just a man of really high integrity. He says, ‘Your Highness, the army and the Ark of the covenant are dwelling in tents. I can’t go and eat and drink and have sex with my wife. As long as you live, I will never do this thing.’ David is messed up! The plan is failing. So he says ‘okay wait another day then. Don’t return just yet.’ Night comes, he totally boozes the dude to get him to go have sex, but apparently the guy’s storm was pretty calm 😂 David is running out of ideas…his last option is to terminate the guy. He’s pretty irritated at this point, so he writes a letter to Joab the commander and gives the most evil instruction:

‘Set Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle and retreat from him, that he may be struck down and die.’

So of course, Bathsheba mourns him, and right after, David takes her as wife. BUT 2 Samuel 11:27 says but the thing David had done displeased the Lord. So here comes Nathan the prophet. He narrates a story about a rich and poor man and how the rich man takes and slaughters for his guest the only little ewe of the poor man which he had grown up with and was like a daughter to him. Chapter 12:5 says David’s anger burned against this rich man. He vows that ‘as the Lord lives, that man shall surely die.’ Go figure! Then the Lord reminds of where He took David from and declares a punishment:

I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. ⁸ I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your keeping, and gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if that had been too little, I also would have given you much more! [Awww ☹] ⁹ Why have you despised the commandment of the Lord, to do evil in His sight? You have killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword; you have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the people of Ammon. ¹⁰ Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’ ¹¹ Thus says the Lord: ‘Behold, I will raise up adversity against you from your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. ¹² For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, before the sun.’

But here’s the thing I love about David. [Read about the difference between David and Saul’s reactions to confrontation here]. He does not justify his sin, he does not shift blame, he simply says ‘I have sinned against the Lord’. Immediately, the Lord forgives him. Yeah it’s that simple. A broken and a contrite heart, the Lord does not despise [Psalm 51:17. David wrote this chapter after this encounter with Nathan]. Now this very next verse is why we’re recounting this story today. Nathan says the Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die. 

HOWBEIT BY THIS DEED, THOU HAS GIVEN GREAT OCCASION TO THE ENEMIES OF THE LORD TO BLASPHEME. – 2 Samuel 12:14

Have you ever for a second thought that your sin has a direct implication on God’s reputation?! HOW? WHY SHOULD IT? Let me use David to illustrate, and then give you a picture of how same or even worse applies to you. David was well known among the nations – and as Israel’s best king. Israel’s pride was in the difference between their religion and those of the other nations, and the difference was in the purity of their religion. ‘David’s fame spread everywhere, and the LORD made every nation afraid of him’ [1 Chronicles 14:17]. Those nations would have screamed, ‘this is your beloved King? The one who sings hymns and slays giants and prays and is mightily anointed?’ Can you imagine the mockery the Lord faced? Because He did anoint David. He did call him his beloved. He did take pride in him! 

So you’re possibly thinking, ‘well but that’s because it’s DAVID we’re talking about here. I mean, I’m not the king of anything, nobody even notices my sin.’

Yoooo! I don’t even know where to start from! First off, do you know the kind of things God has said about you? To the devil?!!!!! Give me soft background music, lemme let explain something to you. For every soul won, that’s one battle won for God and one lost for the enemy! So whatever it will take to have that believer fall or give up, guess who’s up for it? YUP! The enemy. So God has called you awesomely amazing things – the apple of his eye, his righteousness in Christ Jesus, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people set apart! So you don’t give up on the faith like the devil wants, but you constantly give in to the enemy’s tactics on you. Every time you give in to urge to open that private tab and slip your hand down into your shorts or skirt, or be so bitter or nasty towards that next person, this is what you have done 👉🏽 you have given the enemy who by the way is the accuser of the brethren [not the heathen, remember? He needs those ones to remain in their sin] the right to walk up to God and say ‘oh so that’s your chosen generation huh? your righteousness? the apple of your eye huh?’ and just scoff off in laughter. Now I don’t know how bad this makes you feel but it’s more painful for me to know that I was the reason why an infallible and all sufficient God could be so spited by the one person who has constantly sought any opportunity to mock or disrespect the Lord than to know that what I did was merely wrong. 😕 Imagine what would have happened if Job had failed that test! 

Every time the devil presents a temptation, this is what’s happening in the background: He’s waiting to go point fingers at and make a mockery of YOUR God!

Living a consecrated life [which goes beyond sexual purity] has benefits for you as a believer. But the true perspective is that it has more to do with God than with you! There is a point in a believer’s life that everything becomes more about not hurting God than it is about not getting Him angry enough to throw them into hell fire. So Paul said, ‘we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it.’ [2 Corinthians 5:9]

EVERY SIN IS A PREFERENCE OF THE DEVIL’S PROVISION OVER GOD’S PROVISION FOR YOU.

Right from the garden of Eden, he replaced God’s provision of every other tree for food with the one tree they couldn’t eat of. He clones everything God has provided and re-presents and replaces the provision for the clones! So now it’s masturbation for fulfilling sex with a spouse, quick easy cash for wealth from the Lord, massaging the truth for truth!  The temptation isn’t what’s the problem. It’s the giving in! 

This has been a long one. Let’s end it with HOW to overcome: 

1. Memorize 1 Corinthians 10:13

I’ll post the [AMP] version for understanding sake. But there are easier versions you can memorize. 

No temptation [regardless of its source] has overtaken or enticed you that is not common to human experience [nor is any temptation unusual or beyond human resistance]; but God is faithful [to His word—He is compassionate and trustworthy], and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability [to resist], but along with the temptation He [has in the past and is now and] will [always] provide the way out as well, so that you will be able to endure it [without yielding, and will overcome temptation with joy].

Remind yourself of this as often as possible!

2. Renew your mind!

Quit defending your sin with ‘let he who has not sinned cast the first stone’! Quit saying ‘we’re all human.’ He still commands us to be perfect as the Father is [Matthew 5:48 and many more] and holy [1 Peter :16 and many more]. Resolve that you CAN live a near blameless life. Job did.

3. Confess any sin you’re struggling with to someone you can be accountable to.

Don’t choose a friend whose advice you can ignore! Talk to someone you’d be shy to tell you did it again! This was the one thing that helped me finally terminate a sin I struggled with. James 5:16 – Confess your sin to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.

4. Don’t create the environment!

Dude! You know staying up after 1am when you have nothing to do makes you want to take a peek at wrong things. Whyyy do you stay past 1am surfing the internet? You know visiting the friend you used to smoke with will weaken your resolve. Whyyy do you want to ‘just pass through and say hi?’ Romans 12:3 says ‘Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us’. Now if your honest evaluation of yourself is higher than you actually are, then you’re a topic for another day 😆

And lastly,

5. Surround yourself with people who directly or indirectly push you to do better!

‘As one piece of iron sharpens another, so friends keep each other sharp.’ Proverbs 27:17 [ERV] Notice how you’ve started using your friends’ jargons? And how you inadvertently touch your nose sometimes like they do? Or how their voices ring in your head sometimes? Yeah you need people of likemindness if you’re going to make it.

‘Two are better off than one, because together they can work more effectively. ¹⁰ If one of them falls down, the other can help him up. But if someone is alone and falls, it’s just too bad, because there is no one to help him.’ Ecclesiastes 4:9&10

A new grace has appeared unto all men that teaches us to say “no” to all forms of ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age. Titus 2:12

★  RAD ★