Dealing With Failure Series

INTRODUCTION

• SLIDE #1

• One of the most frustrating parts of life can be dealing with failure, succumbing to sin.

• Failure can be especially hard to deal with if you have not dealt with a lot of failure in your life.

• The biggest failure in life usually has to do with walking down a path of sin that gets us into some kind of trouble. It can happen to anyone who is not aware of the dangers that lurk.

• We can be walking with the Lord successfully and then if we are not careful, we can set ourselves up for failure.

• As we have been studying the life of David, it is apparent that David was a very successful person who had a great relationship with God.

• God had done many wonderful things through David and His Spirit was strong within David.

• As the successes in David’s life mounted something started to change in him. David is getting ready to put himself in a position that will forever change his life.

• David is essentially setting himself up for failure.

• Today we are going to look at the story of David and Bathsheba. This is the point of David’s life were things really changes.

• David’s failure had to do with a sin that he committed and the things that happened as a result/

• As we look at how David dealt with this massive failure in his life, we hope we will be able to glean some lessons from his situation that will benefit our lives today.

• Let us begin be first seeing…

• SLIDE #2

SERMON

I. A formula for failure.

• Failure has a formula and if we follow the formula we are sure to fail. As we look at dealing with failure, we need to know the formula for failure so that we can make sure we do not allow that mixture to happen in our lives.

• Let’s begin by looking at four steps in the formula to failure.

• SLIDE #3

1. Letting your guard down.

• We will set ourselves up for problems when we let our guard down. David had had many successes and he had a busy life. Look at verse 1 with me

• SLIDE #4

• 2 Samuel 11:1(ESV) 1In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.

• David instead of doing what a King should have been doing sent Joab to fight the battles for him.

• David allowed himself to sit idly by as the army went to battle, David should have been leading the battle but he stayed at home, lounging around in his robe.

• As David was laying around eating Doritos and drinking coke, listen to what happened.

• SLIDE #5

• 2 Samuel 11:2(ESV) 2It 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.

• David is getting off the couch, after watching some baseball and he is lazily walking around the roof of his house when he saw a woman bathing.

• Ok, maybe he could not help seeing that the woman was bathing. But the passage tells us that not only was a woman bathing and that David saw her, but we are told she was VERY BEAUTIFUL!

• David let his guard down, seeing the woman was not to problem, but what he did next takes him further down the path.

• SLIDE #6

2. Giving traction to your lust.

• It is one thing to look, but David kept it going. Not only that but he did more.

• Look at verse 3-5

• SLIDE #7

• 2 Samuel 11:3-5(ESV) 3And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” 4So 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. 5And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”

• David should have stopped at the look, but then he inquired, then he sent for her, then he slept with her and sent her away.

• David gave traction to his overmastering desire (lust) for Bathsheba.

• SLIDE #8

• James 1:15 (NASB)15Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.

• What now? Verse 5 tells us that David and Bathsheba’s liaison resulted in a surprise for David, what now? Well let’s see the next part of the formula for failure.