Sin and restoration
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SIN AND RESTORATION
SIN AND RESTORATION
There is this great theme all throughout the Bible and it is “Where there is Sin there is death.”
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
In Genesis 1-3 We have the story of God creating everything there is from the birds of the air to the sun and stars. Everything there is was made by God.
God creates everything good, and gives one rule for man and women- “Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for if you do you will surely die.” This is like a parent telling there young child “don’t play in the road, for if a car hits you you will die.” Only the death God spoke of was not only a physical death, Adam and Eve did eventually die a physical death, but God was speaking of an eternal death; separated from God the author of Life.
What do Adam and Eve do? They sin. They disobey God. They see the fruit, desire it and eat it. going against what God command and therefore causing death and sin to enter the world.
Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.
Today our story contains sin. David the greatest King over Israel and a man after GOd’s own heart sinned. It is my hope today we see what sin is:
It is a delight that deceives us
It is a drug that dopes us up
It is a disease that destroys us
It is, as John expressed to us, a disobedience that demoralizes us
It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned to her house. And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”
So David sent word to Joab, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent Uriah to David. When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab was doing and how the people were doing and how the war was going. Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet.” And Uriah went out of the king’s house, and there followed him a present from the king. But Uriah slept at the door of the king’s house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house. When they told David, “Uriah did not go down to his house,” David said to Uriah, “Have you not come from a journey? Why did you not go down to your house?” Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field. Shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing.” Then David said to Uriah, “Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back.” So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. And David invited him, and he ate in his presence and drank, so that he made him drunk. And in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house.
In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. In the letter he wrote, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, that he may be struck down, and die.”
When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she lamented over her husband. And when the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.
What a messed up story!
What we see right off is that David saw Bathsheba, and Just like in the Garden of Eden “Eve saw that the Fruit was delightful..” so was Bathsheba to David.
But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.
1. Sin a delight that Deceives Us
1. Sin a delight that Deceives Us
In the moment David was overcome with what He thought would be delightful. He desired to be with Bathsheba.
Usable Outlines and Illustrations 24. What Is Sin?
Sin is a kiss that kills.
Sin is a hooded harlot whom men think beautiful and long to embrace, but when they take her to their breast she is unveiled as a loathsome hag
Sin looks desirable but what we find is it cost us- and ultimately it leads us to death.
2. Sin is a drug that dopes us
2. Sin is a drug that dopes us
What was David’s response to his first sin? it was to try to cover it up by sinning again. Like a drug He kept digging deeper into it. He looks like a fool when we see the whole story, but this is the effects of sin in our lives- We trade the good things of God for a temporary pleasure that ends up costing us- it’s this the story of any drug addict!
They exchange good things for something that cost them everything- Sin is a drug, and sinners are the addicts.
Samuel Rutherford said, “The more sense of sin the less sin.”
The more we know the truth of what sin is the less we are to continue to do it. Why would we continue in something that leads towards death?
Usable Outlines and Illustrations 24. What Is Sin?
There is this curious paradox in human life that it is not the sinner but the saint who knows most about sin. This is because it drugs its devotees.
It is not the person who is stuck in the midst of a drug addiction that truly knows the affects the addiction as it is those outside of it- the family and loved one who see the life destroyed.
Those who see sin for what it truly is see the affects it has on a life. God sees the affects it has on the soul-Where there is sin there is death. God is truly a God of Grace. In OT He made a sacrificial system that allowed for those who sinned not to die for there sins but to have a substitute.
The story of David and Bathsheba doesn’t end with Uriah dying. There is something much worst that takes place in our story.
And the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.” Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.”
Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul. And I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. 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.’ Thus says the Lord, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of 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. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun.’ ” David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die.” Then Nathan went to his house.
And the Lord afflicted the child that Uriah’s wife bore to David, and he became sick.
David was deceived that his sin would have no consequence, yet Nathan comes and points out the true “Where there is sin there is Death.” And this is an act of God grace for David, cause God opened David’s eyes to see the devastation of his sins.
3. Sin is a disease that destroys us.
3. Sin is a disease that destroys us.
John Newton wrote “ The worst of all diseases, Is light compared with sin; On every part it seizes, But rages most within. ’Tis leprosy and fever, And palsy all combined, And none but the believer, The least relief can find.”
David when confronted with his own actions saw the disease of his sin. His response “I have sinned against the Lord.”
4. Sin is a disobedience that demoralizes us.
4. Sin is a disobedience that demoralizes us.
This means that we become numb to it. We see it everyday and we accept it- David when he heard the story from Nathan the prophet responded with “That is wrong, something needs to be done!”
He didn’t look at his own action, until Nathan Pointed his finger at him and Said “You are that man!”
Christ Connection: When David sinned against God, God forgave him, but sin always comes with a price. God spared David’s life, but David’s son died. When we sin, we deserve death. But we can receive God’s forgiveness because God sent His son, Jesus to pay the price for our sin
The Preacher’s Notebook: The Collected Quotes, Illustrations, and Prayers of John Stott A Hindu Philosopher’s Lecture on God
One day a Hindu philosopher visited a women’s school of village evangelism and asked if he might lecture [the] women on Hinduism. [He was] granted permission, and returned with two others. All sat on mats round [the] floor, and [the] Hindu pundit gave [an] interesting talk on God, ending with a transcendent Being so far away and unapproachable, and man in the depths of such abysmal ignorance and degradation, that they were left gasping for breath.
When he suddenly stopped, the women cried out, “But go on, go on, you can’t stop there.” “Our religion stops there,” he replied.
God says “The wages of Sin is Death...” The story doesn’t end with that He goes on to say “but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The Preacher’s Notebook: The Collected Quotes, Illustrations, and Prayers of John Stott We Need to Be Rid of Our Sin
“Our supreme need from God, therefore, is not the education of our conscience, nor the absorption of our sin, nor even our reconcilement alone, but our redemption. It is not cheer that we need but salvation; not help but rescue; not a stimulus but a change; not tonics but life”
To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.
Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin!
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified in your words
and blameless in your judgment.
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me.
Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being,
and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have broken rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence,
and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit.
Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
and sinners will return to you.
Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God,
O God of my salvation,
and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.
O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare your praise.
For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
Do good to Zion in your good pleasure;
build up the walls of Jerusalem;
then will you delight in right sacrifices,
in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;
then bulls will be offered on your altar.