Five ways to destroy your testimony II Samuel 11:1-15, 27
I was born and raised in Glace Bay, N.S. My father was a coal miner and he was also the son of a coal miner and he was raised in a development of coal company houses in a very run down area of Glace Bay called Bridgeport Rows. (In other words, the houses were falling apart from age.) People once asked me how you got there and I told them to go to the end of the world and take a left. My mother’s parents on the other hand were from Prince Edward Island and they were altogether different. They had an ice packing plant on the island, a summer home and a construction company in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia and another home they used as their winter getaway in Florida.
When I was about six years old my parents decided to move to Toronto and they stayed there until they split up a couple of years later. There were four of us children, two boys and two girls and we stayed with my mother until about three years later when the man she was living with didn’t want all four of us so she wrote to my grandmother in Cape Breton and said if she didn’t take the boys she’d put us in a home as they called it but what they meant was an orphanage. So, my brother and I headed back to Cape Breton and I stayed there until I finished school.
When I turned nineteen I had graduated from high school and decided to leave the island because the only jobs that were available were in the coal mines, so I got a train ticket and headed back to Toronto where I stayed with my mother for a couple of months and then drifted from one mediocre job to another.
I was at a party one night with a bunch of kids when one of them asked me if I wanted to buy some grass. Well, I didn’t know what he was talking about because the whole drug thing was new, and back then, it was like somebody was asking you if you wanted to buy a bag of wheat, so I just said, “If I want some grass I’ll just go out and pick my own.” And then he explained that he was talking about marijuana and not wanting to appear like an idiot I bought some for about five or ten dollars.
I not only enjoyed the grass but later on I tried hashish, and then LSD, psilocybin, opium, speed and even what someone said were pig tranquilizers and whatever was around. I moved into a place called Rochdale College which wasn’t actually a college but was more like an eighteen story drug warehouse where anything and everything was available. And I lived there selling and doing drugs for about two or three years. And believe it or not, I felt like I had achieved something in my life. I had a lot of friends and to a certain degree I was a respected member of the community even if it was a community of drug dealers.
Well, one night I went down to the third floor to one of the rooms that served as a kind of a home made liquor store to buy some wine or hard liquor and the guy said he didn’t have any but he gave me a beer and told me to go home and sleep it off because I had been doing drugs all day and I guess I was looking a little burnt out.
So, as I left there, I was walking down the hallway drinking my beer when something strange caught my attention. Somebody had their door painted and that was normal but on the door was a take off of the words of John Lennon’s song, “All we are saying is give peace a chance” but this one said “All we are saying is give Christ a chance.” Well, I was standing there shaking my head and saying, “what a loser” and I guess I was saying it out loud and I didn’t notice that the door was open about an inch and the guy inside could both see and hear me. He said, “Hey, hey, come on in, I want to talk to you.”
Well, I was kind of startled because I didn’t even notice him there and so I opened the door and said, “I’ll talk to you, as long as you don’t try to shove any of this Jesus stuff down my throat.” And he said, “O.K.” So, I went in and sat down and he poured me a cup of tea and then he said, “Do you know what you need, you need Jesus because He is the answer to your problems?” My first thought was, “Isn’t this the stuff I said I didn’t want to talk about?”
And so, naturally, I started to argue and I said, “If I had faith enough I think Peter Pan could do the job.” And I went on and told him how I had gone to church as a kid and how it was nothing more than a waste of time. And then I said that when my parents split up I prayed every night that God would bring them back together and again nothing happened. And so, as far as I was concerned, if there was a God then either He didn’t care or He wouldn’t do anything to help me.
And he said, “That’s your problem. You treat God like He’s in charge of the storeroom up in heaven and you only talk to Him when you either want or need something. But, I’m talking about giving your life to Jesus Christ and letting Him do with it whatever He wants to. And, if you do, He’ll give you a real purpose for living and eternal life when it’s all over.”
We talked a while and then I thought, “Well, I’ll give it a try and see if God is really there. And if He is, maybe He’ll change my life and if He’s not, then nobody will ever know I did this except this Christian and no one believes them anyway, so, what have I got to lose?”
So, we knelt down on the floor and he told me what to pray and all I said was, “Jesus, I know I’m a sinner and the Bible says you died for my sins and so right now to the best of my ability I invite you to come into my heart and I give you my life and ask you to do with it whatever you want to. Amen”
Now, as I said, I was drunk and stoned when I walked into that room but all of a sudden my mind was as clear as a bell. And almost right away I left the drug dealing and all the other attachments of that life behind. And I’d like to say that I’ve never had another problem ever since but you’d know I was lying because we all have problems, but, for everything I’ve had to go through, I can honestly says that even though I can’t always see the purpose behind everything that happens, I still believe that God has a reason for everything. Now, that’s my testimony of how God began to work in my life and I hope that as long as I am able that I will be faithful to the commitment I made.
Now, what I want to do is to read some of David’s testimony as he wrote it in Psalm 23. He said, “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.”
Now listen, that’s a wonderful testimony and it’s similar to mine in the sense that it was written when he was a much younger man back when he spent his days and nights on the hillsides with a flock of sheep. And as clear as he was in terms of where he stood with God, we know that as time went on David didn’t always live out his testimony in the sense that the Lord was always his shepherd and he an obedient sheep and both he and every one else around him ended up paying dearly for his sin.
So, let me share with you from David’s example in a message I like to call, “Five ways to destroy your testimony.” Now, I know that some of you might be thinking, this is rather negative perspective on life but as someone once said, “Learn from the mistakes of others because you’ll never live long enough to make them all yourself.”
Now, let me ask you a question before we start. Did you ever get up in the morning, sit on the side of your bed and say to yourself, “How can I ruin my life today or how can I destroy my reputation and make sure everybody questions my credibility for the rest of my life?” Well, the answer is, no one in their right mind would ever do that and yet every day Christians are destroying their marriages and ruining their testimonies by things they do.
Whenever we talk about moral failure in the Christian life we think about the likes of Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggert or maybe even a pastor we once knew but what I want to talk about today is, everyday, ordinary Christians like you and I. Did you know that there are people in your circle of family and friends who are more concerned with your personal testimony than they are with someone on TV who they’ve never met and hopefully never will. You see, what these TV preachers do can be nothing more than entertainment but what you do can affect their very lives.
And since people don’t actually go out of their way to destroy their testimony, then we have to ask ourselves, then how does it happen? And let’s face it, if we know where the problems are in life, it’s much easier to avoid them. And so, with that thought in mind, let me point out five ways to destroy your testimony and listen, if you’ve ever taken notes, then this might just be the one time you ought to.
I like the perspective of God because He tells us the whole story of life in the Bible, both the failures as well as the successes. And in the Bible we see real people with real problems just like you and I. Some of these people were used of God because they were faithful while others who had great abilities were simply set aside because of their sin. And sin is the issue, and so, we’ll either experience the victory over sin or sin will have the victory over us. So, here we go:
And the first way to destroy your testimony is: to tell yourself it will never happen to you. Tell yourself that you’re above all that. Others may fail but God can count on you.
Listen, if anybody had a reason to think that he was safe from the temptations of the flesh it had to be David. I mean, he wasn’t a filthy reprobate who had no knowledge or fear of the almighty. He had come from an orthodox Jewish home and he had memorized much of the Old Testament scriptures. We see this as we read his writings of the psalms and then as you study Solomon’s references to his father’s instructions. Listen, David was into the word of God and he had the word of God in him.
And when he was a young man David had been appointed by the prophet Samuel, so he would have had a sense of being chosen and called by God early in life. By his own testimony he had known the power of God as a shepherd and he had fought both a lion and a bear with his bare hands and then later he experienced victory over Goliath and then he led the armies of Israel in all kinds of battles. And in all of this, he experienced God’s provision, protection and direction. And on top of that he received what’s known as the Davidic covenant which was the promise that the very Messiah would be one of his descendants. Listen, let there be no question in your mind, David was a man of God.
But at the same time, you also have to realize this, the victory of our past never inoculates us from failure in the future. Did you get that? Let me repeat it, the victory of our past never inoculates us from failure in the future. And if we learn anything from David’s life, it’s this, “Success is not always final.” And as we’ll see David wasn’t immune to temptation any more than the rest of us are.
Many who experience success in one area of life become proud and they think they’re special and somehow they see themselves as being a cut above the rest. They think, the rules of life only apply to the little people but not to them. But listen, pride comes before the fall and as Paul warns us in I Corinthians 10:12, “Let him that thinketh he stand take heed lest he fall.” Or as Jack Wyrtzen used to say, “Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he standeth on a banana peel.”
You see, our reaction to temptation should always be to do as II Timothy 2:22 warns us to do, “Flee also youthful lusts but follow righteousness, faith, love, peace with them that call on the Lord with a pure heart.” And it’s interesting that Timothy was somewhere around 40-45 years old when Paul was writing this. So, he wasn’t telling him to get over it but he was reminding him that the lusts that began in his youth would follow him all the rest of his life.
I heard of a young preacher who was talking to an older one and he asked him, “When will the problem of lustful temptation leave me?” And the old preacher said, “About three days after you’re dead.”
Listen, if you want to destroy your testimony, just tell yourself, it will never happen to me. I remember reading an article about Gordon MacDonald’s fall into sexual sin and he said, “I never considered the threat of committing adultery a problem” but he did it. And do you know what he did wrong? He told himself, it will never happen to me.
And then the second way to ruin your testimony and guarantee you’ll fall into sin is to let your mind dwell on secret sins. As we look at this passage in 2 Samuel the first thing I wonder about here is why is David staying home while everyone else is going into battle? I think there could have been several reasons and I think his pride and laziness contributed to his situation. You see, God had been with David in all of his battles and He had given him victory over all of his enemies and we could say that God had given David a great name. I mean, he was famous and now I think his problem was he had begun to believe his own press clippings. I mean, everyone talked about how great he was and now he thought, I guess I am. So, he began to feel like he was invincible and he came to the place where he thought he was so good that he could lead Israel to victory, even though he wasn’t with them in battle.
A second reason he didn’t go to the battle may have been boredom. After all, it’s one thing to fight battles where the enemy is quickly defeated but when it came to taking a city like Rabbah this was a whole different kind of war. This wasn’t the kind of battle where you would fight and win but they’d have to sit outside the city and starve the Ammonites to the point where they’d surrender. And while they waited, the Israeli soldiers would have to pitch their tents outside the city and live in the open fields for who knows how long. And David would rather stay home and enjoy his bed rather than lying on a bed roll in a tent in the open weather.
And then the third reason and I’m even hesitant to suggest this is that David may have been getting soft. And let’s face it, he had some very difficult days when he was on the run from Saul and I’m sure there were a lot of hot days and cold nights. And now, David has moved up in the world, from sleeping in a cave in the barren wilderness to the palace in Jerusalem.
So, David doesn’t stay home to meditate on the Law of Moses or to write another psalm or two but he seems to stay home to spend some time in bed. We know that Uriah went to bed in the evening or when it got dark and very likely he got up at first light but with David, it was different because it says that David doesn’t get up until the evening and that was the time when everyone else would be going to bed. And from all appearances, it seems like David is simply indulging himself.
And in verse 2 it says, “One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful and David sent someone to find out about her.” The man said, "Isn’t this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" 4 Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her.”
We notice here that David went through three stages in his sin. It says, he looked, he inquired and then he yielded to temptation. In verse 2 it says, ‘he saw.’ And as I said he should have been at the battle with everyone else, so, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time looking at the wrong things. If he had been at battle with the rest of his men, like he should have been, he wouldn’t have gotten himself into trouble.
Due to the nature of the world we live in we are constantly being exposed to sin but as Augustine wrote, “It’s one thing for a bird to fly overhead while it’s quite another to let him build a nest in your hair.” So, just because we’re exposed to sin, and all of us are, doesn’t mean we have to indulge in every thing we look at.
And then it says, ‘he inquired’ and when he did this he found out that she was a married woman and not only was she married but both her father and her husband were considered to be among the leaders of David’s army. This tells us that as their king that David had a special obligation to protect the families of these men. So, he had every reason in the world to walk away from this situation but it was obvious that his reasoning was working. You see, lust isn’t reasonable because there’s no sense of rationale when it comes to either emotion or passion.
And then we are told he yielded to temptation. It’s like James 1:15 says, “Lust brings forth sin and sin brings forth death.” And you’ll remember that Eve did the same thing in the garden, she saw that the fruit was pleasant to the eyes, then she thought about it, and considered that it was desirable to make one wise and then with the encouragement of Satan she yielded or she helped herself.
And then we notice that Satan had the same approach with Jesus in His temptations when he offered Him something as frivolous as food to eat and when He refused it, then he told Him to jump off the temple or make a big deal about yourself and failing this he said, fall down and worship me because this would be a shortcut to what you’re looking for. And here was three good opportunities for Jesus to do what He knew was the wrong thing to do. Thankfully, Jesus had no intention to commit any sin to get anything He wanted or even what He needed.
But listen, if you let your mind dwell on secret sins long enough then your subconscious mind will devise ways of getting the things you want while completely justifying your actions. You’ll tell yourself, “I deserve it and no one going to get hurt, so why shouldn’t I just help myself.”
As the old saying goes, “You sow a thought, you reap an action. You sow an action, you reap a habit. You sow a habit, you reap a character. You sow a character, you reap a destiny.”
We have to be careful as to who or what we allow to influence our thinking because the pleasure of sin is short but the consequences can last for eternity. And what we have to remember is that God not only sees our actions, but He sees the very thoughts and intents of our hearts. In other words, He sees the things we miss altogether.
The third way to destroy your testimony is to let your passions dictate your actions. Each of us is aware that we have a body, a soul and a spirit and that’s the order we usually cater to them. We take care of our bodies, then we cater to our souls and if we have a major crisis in life we get all concerned about our spirits.
I remember the year the Gulf war began and we had people in prayer meeting that hardly ever came to the morning services. Listen, I didn’t even think it was a major battle at the time but when I saw these people coming to prayer meeting I thought it was the end of the world. But, why does it take a catastrophe either in our world, our communities or our families or even in our own lives before we get concerned about our spiritual needs?
The answer is simple. We’re too pre-occupied with the things of this world. Our body’s needs are given precedence over our spiritual needs and we allow our passions to dictate our actions.
In II Corinthians 5:17 Paul wrote, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation, old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new.” This tells me that we have two natures within us and the old nature is dominated by the flesh and it’s influenced by any sinful habits we have and it’s also motivated by our memories of past failures. The new nature on the other hand is the one that’s influenced by God. And the nature that’s dominant is the one we feed. This means we are to live a life of self-denial by saying no to ourselves and yes to God and this is just the opposite of what the world says, because they say, “If it feels good, do it” but God says, listen, “You’ll reap what you sow.”
Tell yourself, it will never happen to you, let your mind dwell on secret sins and let your passions dictate your actions and all this leads to the fourth way to destroy your testimony and that’s to convince yourself that you can escape the consequences of your sin.
I think David had probably thought he had gotten away with his sin. He had his little fling and as far as he was concerned no one knew about it but then Bathsheba sent him word that she was pregnant and he knew he had to do something to either make it right or to cover his tracts. And he decided to have her husband brought home to try and make it look like it was his child. And when her husband didn’t sleep with her David sent him back to the front lines with the intention of having him killed. And then when all this happened, he took Bathsheba as his wife and he probably looked like he was consoling a poor widow. And everything looked like it was going to work out right.
And then we read that Nathan the prophet dropped in for a visit and he said that he had a message from God. You see, everyone else may have forgotten David’s sin of adultery and Uriah’s murder but God didn’t. Numbers 32:23 says, “Be sure your sin will find you out.” And we see this several times in scripture. Ammon might have forgotten that he had raped Tamar but two years later Absalom killed him and then Jezebel might have forgotten the message she got from Elijah but 20 years later the dogs ate her body outside the castle walls. Listen, this tells us that God will judge the unbeliever or He’ll chastise the believer but He’ll never forget.
And then we see the consequences of David’s sin. Bathsheba was pregnant, and then Uriah and several others died in the battle as well, David lost the respect of those who knew about his sin, then Bathsheba’s baby died, there was conflict in his family as Ammon raped Tamar, Absalom killed Ammon, Absalom stole David’s throne and then was killed by David’s uncle and then God sent a famine and a plague that resulted in 70,000 people dying and all this for what? A night of fun? No, it was for sin!
There was an article in Leadership Magazine a while back called, Consequences of a moral tumble” by Randy Alcorn. And he said, “Whenever I feel particularly vulnerable to sexual temptation, I find it helpful to review what effects my actions could have. For instance, I’d be grieving the Lord who redeemed me. I’d be dragging his sacred name through the mud. One day I’d have to look Jesus, the Righteous Judge, in the face and give Him an account of my actions. I’d be following in the footsteps of those people whose immorality forfeited their ministries and caused me to shudder. I’d be inflicting untold hurt on my best friend and loyal wife and then losing her respect and trust. I’d be hurting my children and destroying my example and credibility with them and nullifying both present and future efforts to teach them to obey God. After all, why should they listen to a man who betrayed both their mother and them? And then if my blindness should continue or my wife is unable to forgive me, perhaps losing my wife and my children forever. I’d be causing shame to my family as they’d ask, “Why isn’t Daddy a pastor anymore? I’d be losing self-respect and creating a form of guilt I could never shake because even though God would forgive me, I could never forgive myself. I’d be forming memories and flashbacks that could plague any future intimacy with my wife. I’d be wasting years of the years of ministry training and experience I’ve had. I’d be forfeiting the effects of years of witnessing to my father and reinforcing his distrust for ministers that has only begun to soften by my example but that would harden, perhaps permanently, because of my immorality. I’d be undermining the faithful example and hard work of other Christians in our community. I’d be bringing great pleasure to Satan, the enemy of God and all that is good. And then I’d be heaping judgment and endless difficulty on the person with whom I committed adultery. And then I could also be bearing the physical consequences of pregnancy with the personal and financial implications, including a lifelong reminder of my sin. And then there’s always the possibly of bearing the physical consequences of such diseases as gonorrhea, syphilis, Chlamydia, herpes, and AIDS maybe even infecting my wife or in the case of AIDS, even causing her death. And then causing shame and hurt to my friends and especially those I’ve led to Christ and discipled.”
Listen, this guy had a real good bunch of reasons to keep himself away from the sin of immorality and as Galatians 6:7 reminds us, “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked, whatsoever a man sows, this also will he reap.”
Tell yourself, it will never happen to you.
Let your mind dwell on secret sins.
Let your passions dictate your actions.
And then convince yourself that you can escape the consequences of your sin. But as they say, “Success isn’t always final and failure isn’t always fatal unless you attempt the fifth way to destroy your testimony, which is, to try to cover your sin.
David tried to cover his adultery with deceit and when that didn’t work he turned to murder and if sin isn’t dealt with it can lead to disastrous consequences. It’s like toxic waste. I mean, you can dump it and forget it but some day it’ll come back to haunt you.
David tried to forget about his sin but there were too many reminders. Bathsheba reminded him that she was pregnant and she had no intention of suffering alone. Uriah reminded him as he spoke from the grave every time someone mentioned his name as a faithful warrior. And I’m sure Joab reminded him every time David would rebuke him for something he did wrong he’d get a look on his face that said, “Don’t try to pull that high and mighty stuff with me, I know what you did.” And then Nathan reminded him as he preached a sermon on sin that was just for him. And in essence God reminded him every time he turned around.
You see, we can be like David and talk one way but live another but everyone will sense the emptiness of our testimony. As Proverbs 28:13 says, “He that covers his sin shall not prosper, he that confesses and forsakes his sin shall find mercy.”
Conclusion
So, what do we do? Don’t say, it’s never going to happen to me but be honest with yourself and accept the fact of your sinfulness and be careful about where you go and what you do.
Don’t dwell on secret sins. Always remember that nothing is secret to God. He who dwells within us sees what we see and hears what we hear and He knows everything we say and the reason we say it. So, be careful not to grieve Him by exposing Him to the very things that offend Him.
Don’t let your passions dictate your actions but we are to walk in the Spirit and to give no opportunity to the flesh.
Be aware of the consequences of your sin because you will reap what you sow.
Don’t waste your time trying to cover your sin but confess and forsake it, keeping in mind that the Lord is merciful to those who are honest with Him.
Listen, if a man of David’s caliber can fail so miserably then where does that leave you and I? If we’re honest, we’ll admit that we love our selves too much and that deep down inside we hope that somehow we’ll get a chance to experience the things that others are always getting away with. And even though we know we are guilty before a holy God we do our best to deny how bad we really are. In other words’ we’re just like David who tried to make Uriah look like he was the father of the baby and when that didn’t work, he just had Uriah killed. And we may never commit adultery or resort to killing anyone but I’m sure there are times when we can try to cover up our sin just like he did.
And we also attempt to justify ourselves by excusing our sin by saying it’s someone else’s fault or we can argue that we have a valid reason for committing a sin by referring to it as a sickness, a mental condition, or even a hormonal imbalance. And all this goes to show that our sinful hearts are very creative in making ways to justify our own evil.
And then we also see that there came a time when David thought that everything was past and he could just forget about it but God remembered. And the same thing can happen to us because all of us can be oblivious to our own sin. You see, sin is so sinful that we can become insensitive to sin but just because a skunk doesn’t smell his own stink doesn’t make him smell any better.
There are some folks in the Bible who we question as to whether they ever came to faith in God like Balaam or Samson or even Saul but we have no such questions regarding David. He is not only a believer but at times he was a model believer. As a matter of fact, David sets the standard because he is called a man after God’s own heart but in spite of his relationship to God and in spite of his marvelous times of worship and his beautiful psalms, he fell into sin. And if David can fall, then so can you or I.
