Wrong Way! Go Back!

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David should have been at war.  It was springtime, and his military troops had returned to battle to complete what they started before the long, rainy, cold winter set in.  Instead, David remained in Jerusalem.  Pacing the floor of his balcony, likely thinking of the his men and worried just a little that he hadn't accompanied them, David glanced over and saw Bathsheba.  At that very moment every thought of his nation's battle and his lack of entreaty to the Lord stopped plaguing him, and his mind, as well as his eye, lingered on Bathsheba.  Thus began a snowball of sin coming down the mountain of his life.  Or so I used to think.

As long as I have been reading my bible I was sure that this one moment in David's life, of falling to a fleshly temptation, had ushered in a bushel of horrible choices.  But the truth of the matter is this:  David's sin began long before that fateful night on the balcony.  It began the moment David took his second wife. 

God had clearly given the command that the men of Israel were to be monogamous.  God put the parameters of "one wife" around them to protect them.  Yet David "overlooked" this particular commandment and justified himself as he took wife after wife, and concubine after concubine.  For several years his disobedience appeared to also be "overlooked" by God.  But it wasn't.  With God, appearance is irrelevant.  God hated sin, so He gave commandments to show His people what He expected out of their behavior.  God hated David's sin,  and not just in the moment when he fell to the temptation of not looking away from Bathsheba.  God hated David's sin the moment he fell to his selfish lack of control that opened the door to a second marriage while still married to his first wife.  God hated the lust in David's heart the presented itself long before his sleepless night of pacing.

Caught in his sin, David would now suffer the consequences of leaving his lust unchecked.  Countless times David could have confessed to God regarding his sinful heart, but he never did.  Not until he had been caught by the prophet Nathan in a wicked scheme to keep his infidelity a secret, a scheme that involved lies, betrayal, and a murderous plot.  Nathan called David's honor and integrity into account, and David, truly heart-broken over his sin, confessed to God the truth He already knew.

The ugliness and sin in David's heart began as a tiny seed of dissatisfaction with the wife of his youth, but it grew into a massive, strangling vine.  God let it grow until He had finally had enough.  What David thought God must have "winked at," he now realized had been a critical flaw in his character.  

What sin have you been committing for a very long time now?  Has it seemed that it is just "no big deal" to God since He really hasn't challenged you in regard to it?  Learn from the life of David.  What hasn't been dealt with will surely be!  God is not willing that evil reside in any of us.  If you have let it go unchecked, as David did, you can count on God pulling the rug out from under you sooner or later.  Take a good look into your heart.  What is your ugly, sinful vine?  Surrender now and confess it to God and walk away from it..  It's the wrong way!  Go back!  Get on the right path!  Better to handle it that way than to wait for the discipline of the Lord!