2 Sam. 11 'fatal attraction, part 1'
Working with the text
Text
Reading the text: thoughts and reflections
Scholarship helps
- Step 1: Alignment
- What is in the text?
- Authorial intent
- Grammar (look for iva clauses in Gk), words, culture, context
Context & historical background
Language
Bathsheba means seventh daughter or daughter of the oath.
Dictionaries
Commentaries
11:3. family of Bathsheba. The father of Bathsheba is Eliam, a member of David’s special cadre of “mighty men” (2 Sam 23:34) and therefore the head of an influential household. This Eliam is the son of Ahithophel, one of David’s most respected advisors (2 Sam 15:12; 16:23). This information, along with the fact that her husband, Uriah the Hittite, is also one of the “mighty men” (2 Sam 23:39), suggests that David knew exactly whose house he was looking at and was well acquainted with Bathsheba (an alternative translation suggests that it was David who said “Is this not Bathsheba?”).
i. If David thought about all this, he would see that the cost was so much greater than he wanted to consider at the time. If David knew that this illicit pursuit of pleasure would directly or indirectly result in:
· An unwanted pregnancy
· The murder of a trusted friend
· A dead baby
· His daughter raped by his son
· One son murdered by another son
· A civil war led by one of his sons
· A son who imitates David's lack of self-control and it leads him and much of Israel away from God
Relevant Bible references
Proverbs 3:5-6 NIV
5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
6 in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight.
2 Corinthians 10:3-5 NIV
3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
James 1:13-15 NIV
13 When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14 but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.
Sermon Development
- Step 2: Clarity
- What is the text saying?
- What is the main idea?
- Modifying thoughts and concepts
- Write it out in one sentence (does your sentence = your exegesis?)
What is the text saying?
What is the central idea/theme?
- Step 3: Connection
- What is the text saying to me?
- In your own words
- In your own world
- In your own struggles
Current/local issues (from news and other sources)
- Step 4: Relevance
- What is the text saying to my listeners? (one idea that comes from Haddon Robinson: think of an invisible audience of varied types of people in your congregation and “ask” them what their “responses” are)
- In their words
- In their culture
- Step 5: Plan
- Structure your message to move toward life-changing experience
- One central principle
- Main points
- Introduction
- Conclusion (repeat the central principle)
- Use transformational terms (not just information)
o Call to a challenge
- Step 6: Transformational tools
- Transitions
- Illustrations
- Don’t use books
- Personal: but make sure you qualify
- Family
- Movies
- Etc.
- Make sure it is properly weighted
- Be sensitive
- Word choice (use memorable words)
- Word pictures
- Action points
Illustrations
n a recent survey in Discipleship Journal Magazine, readers reported that their greatest spiritual challenges came from
1. Materialism
2. Pride
3. Self-centeredness
4. Laziness
5. Anger/Bitterness (Tie)
6. Sexual Lust (Tie)
7. Envy
8. Gluttony
9. Lying
Survey respondents noted that temptations seemed more potent when they neglected their time with God and when tired physically.
-Did you know that some of the best business minds in the country are working really hard to get you and your sons hooked on pornography. Some have called it - The Mainstreaming of Pornography – 60 Minutes did a story on this last Sunday night.
Consider these facts:
*Sales of sexual films in hotel rooms, homes, and online has become a $10 billion industry, according to Forrester Research of Cambridge, Mass.
*General Motors, the world’s largest company, now sells more graphic sex films through its DirecTV subsidiary than does Hustler pornographer Larry Flynt, according to distributors of the films
*EchoStar Communications Corp., the No. 2 satellite provider, makes more money selling sex films than Playboy does with its magazines, cable, and Internet businesses, records from the companies show.
The sex business in America is estimated to be a $13 billion-a-year industry. It is estimated that 60% of all web sites are pornographic and that Americans spent $220 million in 2002 at fee-based adult web sites. By the year 2005, the amount is expected to reach $320 million. There are many free sites that are designed to get you hooked to become a paying customer.
-I don’t know that it is “Every Young Man’s Battle” but 90% of born-again Christians have said that they have had problems in relating to God or to other people because of shame and guilt over pornography.
Stories
Story: The habits and customs of the Eskimos of North Alaska have been remained very much the same for 500 years, until very recently.
They had to depend on catching the polar bear
for meat,
for clothing – the bear’s fur,
for fat for cooking, and
for tools, the bear’s bones and teeth
However you don’t just go out and catch a polar bear. The polar bear is too big for a man to take head on - so they developed an ingenious way of catching them.
First of al the Eskimos kill a small seal drag the carcass across the snow leaving a trail of blood. They then take a double edged knife and freeze the long handle about two foot deep into the snow leaving the double edged blade protruding.
They then place the carcass over the blade.
And then the game of patience begins.
The polar bear finds the tracks of blood in the snow, follows the tracks and finds an easy meal.
Once he had said grace! he tucks into the food and soon the delicacy would be devoured. The Eskimos are smart, they know that if they take a small seal rather than a large seal, the bear would still be incredibly hungry even after eating the seal.
He devours the little seal, and he licks the blade.
Just as I used to lick the bowl when Mum used to make a cake.
The bear licks, and licks, and licks. Now remember the bear is drawn to his food by the taste of blood . The more he licks the more he tastes blood – his own blood!! In fact, it is the taste of his own blood that kills him!!.
The blood is the ’fatal attraction’ for the bear.
Notable quotes
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln
When you flee temptation, be sure you don't leave a forwarding address.
Source Unknown.
"Every temptation that comes to me is packaged as a good." - Eugene Peterson
Humor
Have you ever wondered why opportunity knocks once – yet temptation bangs on the door constantly?
A fly was buzzing along one morning when he saw a lawn
mower someone had left out in their front yard. He flew over and sat on the handle, watching the children going down the sidewalk on their way to school.
One little boy tripped on a crack and fell, spilling his lunch on the sidewalk. He picked himself up, put his lunch back in the bag and went on. But he missed a piece of bologna. The fly had not eaten that morning and he sure was hungry. So he flew down and started eating the bologna. In fact he ate so much that he could not fly, so he waddled across the sidewalk, across the lawn, up the wheel of the lawn mower, up the handle, and sat there resting and watching the children.
There was still some bologna laying there on the sidewalk. He was really stuffed, but that baloney sure did look good.
Finally temptation got the best of him and he jumped off the handle of the lawn mower to fly over to the baloney. But alas he was too full to fly and he went splat!!, killing him instantly.
The moral of the story: Don’t fly off the handle when you are full of baloney.
There’s a dark side to us, that’s as reckless as the fly. It does not matter what the costs are, you just got to have it. Humanity is like that, so full of baloney, they can’t see it and they fly off the handle, thinking they can handle it all, and be satisfied only to end up splat.
A man and his wife were shopping at a mall and a shapely young woman in a short, form-fitting dress strolled by. The man’s eyes followed her. Without looking up from the item she was examining, his wife asked, "Was it worth the trouble you’re in?"
Sermon outline
Introduction
Body
Conclusion