In 1501, Michelangelo was presented with a huge piece of marble and commissioned to create a statue of David for the Cathedral in Florence, Italy. Other sculptors had rejected the stone because of a defect. Michelangelo, however, began a work that would take three years to complete. He knew that deep within that block of marble the sweet singer of Israel, David, was waiting to be released. Michelangelo was willing to take the risk of using the damaged stone to accomplish his intended purpose. Only a master artist could release that incredible sculpture of David from a block of flawed marble without completely destroying it. (1)
The human David also had a serious flaw at the center of his life. Had anyone other than the Master worked on him he would have been destroyed. David reminds us that the relationship between our love for God and our potential for sin is deeper than we realize. Paul lets us in on the same truth when he says in Romans that all of us are prone to sin.
The Bible clearly states, “All have sinned.” (Romans 3:32) It is in my nature to sin; it is your nature to sin. David reminds us that we were conceived in sin. (Psalm 51:5) None of us go unaffected. We hurt ourselves, we hurt other people, and we are hurt by other people, all because of sin. So what is the solution? Ask God to forgive your sin and commit to the work of recovery.
As you walk with God you are either in recovery, rebellion, or relapse. Study the life of David in 2 Samuel and see if you don’t agree with this idea.
A common phrase used in the world of healing is, “time heals all wounds.” I have found this to be more false than true. As a pastor, I talk regularly with people who are still carrying hurts from 30 or 40 years ago. The real truth is, time often makes things worse. Wounds that are left untended fester and spread throughout the entire body. (2) Time only extends the pain if the problem is not dealt with.
So, what is the solution? Learning how to make right choices! The most important thing you will do today is make choices. You will make thousands of them. By the way, although this life offers thousands of choices, eternity only offers two: heaven or hell. Do you realize the choices you make determine your destiny?
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference 3
1. Are choices the very hinges of destiny?
2. Do we make choices or are we just the product of our genes, as some scientists would say?
3. Are we just the product of our past, as some psychologists would say?
4. Or, are we the product of God’s sovereignty, as some theologians would say?
I believe that each day we all make choices that produce spiritual, mental, and emotional health. That makes it possible for us to overcome problems like anger, anxiety, addiction, worry, discouragement, depression, grief, guilt, and burnout.
The result of right choices is a life of effectiveness for Christ and happiness for you. Webster’s Thesaurus tells us that synonyms for the word choice include: selection, preference, alternative, and election.
It is my conviction and a core value that choices are the hinges of destiny. Robert Frost’s poem agrees with the Word of God and bears out this truth:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.4
The Bible certainly teaches that God is sovereign, but it also teaches that you and I are responsible for our choices. Let me suggest some of the most well known choices made in scripture:
“Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve…But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15)
“But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part and it will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:42)
“I call heaven and earth as a witness today against you, that I have set before you “life and death” blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live. (Deuteronomy 30:19)
Teach people the importance of their choices. Help your kids, clients, and colleagues know the importance of each individual choice. Today we go into the palace of Israel’s most beloved king, the only person God ever declared, “He is man after my own heart.” (1 Samuel 13:14) Yet David, the Sweet Singer of Israel, giant killer, and Jonathan’s best friend, repeatedly makes a series of bad choices that leaves a path of destruction.
David’s life offers several lessons for making right choices. God places these stories before us in his word so we won’t make the same mistakes:
11These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. (1 Corinthians 10:11)
So, what are the most important choices you’ll ever make? Look with me at four of them that are identified by David’s life in 2 Samuel 11.
David’s Choices and Ours
1. Learn to control your feelings (2 Samuel 11: 3-4)
David was hijacked by his feelings. If you read the story line, you see that he is all over the board with his emotions. He races back and forth between temptation, lust, craving, and finally sin. One can see how devastating and self-deceiving feelings can be. The opening verses introduce us to:
David’s lust … He craves another man’s wife
Arrogance … leads to abuse of power.
The devotion to idolatrous lust, cravings, and arrogance is a sure fire formula for disaster. It always leads to sin. As John Piper says, “Sin is what we do when we are not completely satisfied in God.”5
We try to disguise our feelings and make them look good and reasonable when, in fact, many of our emotions and feelings are down right sinful. John Calvin conveys this truth when he says, “The evil in our desire often is not in what we want but that we want too much.”6
We make choices everyday. There are some events we have no control over, but with others we stand at a crossroads of decision. We can either make bad choices or make Christ-like choices. Our mind, will, and emotions dwell in our soul. Often it is our emotions, the feeling part of our soul that drives our choices.
Be careful. Never underestimate the power of your emotions or feelings. I have often seen very spiritual and intellectual people driven by feelings to behaviors that are inconsistent with God’s word and their Christ-honoring way of living. I am guilty of such choices. So are you! Feelings may be positive, but they can also be negative; feelings can be overt, they can also be covert; feelings may be strong for Christ, but they can also be strong for Satan.
To understand the power of feelings, just read the daily newspaper:
Medical doctor abuses drugs
Schoolteacher abuses students
Pastor of local congregation abuses his position.
Teenager of well-respected, professional family dies from abusing her body with starvation (anorexia) - nobody knew.
Never forget this: feelings are often stronger than powers of reason. When you are led by your feelings and emotions, you wind up with immoral, abusive, and self-destructive attitudes. This was David’s big mistake, and ours. So, what is the solution?
2. Share Your Feelings. If we confess our sins (feelings) one to another… (1 John 1:9)
Talk about your feelings. Learn to be accountable. If you fail to talk about your feelings you will often act upon them. Most sin is secret. We don’t want others to know about it. And David was guilty.
3. Exercise control of your behaviors and actions (vs. 5-10)
The Bible is not shy about exposing the behavior of God’s people, especially His leaders. David’s sinful behavior could not be more exposed than what you read in our text, it is revealed in Bathsheba’s pregnancy. Sinful behavior grows. Instead of making confession, David justifies his behavior and tries to cover it up. Unconfessed behavior results in more self-justification and additional attempts to cover things up. Read the text. It is spelled out plainly. Learn from it. Flee this type of living. The scripture teaches that our behavior determines our destiny. What you do today has a powerful and profound impact on tomorrow.
Are you familiar with one of Satan’s greatest traps? It is to get you to yield to a momentary pleasure that leads to weeks, months, and even years of pain, confusion, and heartache. Do you get it, friend? Think about it for a moment! Before being entrapped like David, think about the high cost to your walk with God, family, health, reputation, and even ministry. You do the math. Momentary pleasure. Is it worth hours, days, weeks, months, and even years of pain?
Life is too short to waste on poor choices.7 Take that to the bank. Mark it down. Memorize that truth. Learn to ask yourself these four questions about your behavior:
1. What is the problem?
2. What are my options?
3. Which ones will I choose?
4. When will I start?
Identify your unhealthy habits. Search for the right ones. Seek out godly advice and assistance. Replace wrong habits with godly ones. When it comes to changing behavior, start by crawling, walking, and then running. When you succeed in the small areas of life, the bigger ones will come in line much easier.
Suggestions to start:
Smile more
Use the right tone of voice
Look out for the interests of others over yourself
Say and show thanks at every opportunity
Bless others
Learn the art of listening
Avoid, flee, and stay out of meaningless chatter, discussions, and arguments
Share sincere appreciation and approval.
These types of behaviors will build momentum and motivation to help you make the right choices and changes that will affect your behavior. You’ll be rewarded with great joy and pleasure knowing that you’re pleasing God and will hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
If you have never memorized Galatians 5:22-23, let me suggest it to you. If fact, if you were to make each part of the Fruit of the Spirit a prayer, I guarantee you would see a radical change in your behavior.
Father, place your love in my heart. Teach me how to love unconditionally. God help me to remember that love covers a multitude of sins.
Then go on to joy.
Father, joy is a choice. I choose it today. Give me the joy of your salvation. Teach me to rejoice always.
Are you getting the picture? If it’s too much to do all of them at once then start with one, but do something. What you’re doing now isn’t working. You’ve heard what insanity is - doing the same thing over and over and expecting a change.
Life is too short to waste on poor behavior. - Frank Minirith
4. Correct your erroneous thinking (vs. 14-17)
With every additional sinful act David committed, he was loosing ground because of distorted thinking. Look at verse 14 and you’ll see that David is clearly caught up in wrong thought patterns.
14In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. 15In it he wrote, “Put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die.” (2 Samuel 11:14-15)
The thoughts of Sweet Singer of Israel had turned sour.
You must do several things to change your thinking:
First, identify wrong belief systems.
Second, acknowledge these belief systems as strongholds (2 Corinthians 10:4-5)
Third, use spiritual weapons to tear them down (2 Corinthians 10:4)
Finally, learn to take every thought captive (2 Corinthians 10:5)
A stronghold is a place where your thinking has become sympathetic to evil.
“This sin won’t hurt anyone but me.” - stronghold
“Nobody will ever find out.” - stronghold
“God will forgive me of this sin.” - stronghold
“I can change anytime I want to.”- stronghold
The Bible is clear that right thinking is essential to success in the Christian life - “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7). You are not what you think you are; what you think, you are.
Listen to a word from Paul to the Romans in 12:2, “And do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but be renewed (transformed) by the renewing of your mind.”
Our brains are able to think at 400 to 1200 words per minute. Your thinking has the power of life and death over you! Have you come to understand that in the Christian life
Every great discovery began with a thought,
Every great lesson and principle learned began with a thought,
Every great act of kindness began with a thought,
Every great expression of love began with a thought?
Do you recognize this truth? Cancer patients have extended their lives just by the will to live. Cancer patients have shorted their lives because they’ve lost the motivation to live. You could prolong the length of your life by wanting to live or you could accelerate your demise and end by giving up.
Here are two words of advice:
First, be careful about negative input going into your mind (thinking), it’s killing your walk with God. Television, books, magazines, movies, and the Internet - these and other sources are putting negative and destructive thoughts into your mind. When this happens they are actually changing the chemistry of your brain. The neurotransmitters change with input, and it is these neurotransmitters that control our emotional, spiritual and physical choices.8
Be careful what goes into your heart, mind, and thinking. Learn to refuse to dwell on negative thinking. Learn to read uplifting books. Watch Christian television and wholesome programs. Listen to Christian music.
“The problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”9 What an amazing truth. When you face a challenge, you need God-like thinking, supernatural insight, a fresh look at the problem from Heaven’s perspective. The thinking you have going into the problem will never deliver you from the problem. That is why Paul says, “Be anxious for nothing, pray about everything.” (Philippians 4:6) Those seven words are the best therapy in the Bible. They give you your only hope for a proper perspective - prayer.
Only God-given thoughts can resolve life’s problems as they arise. Reread the story of David and see if the truth I am talking about is not spelled out in each verse of the story.
Second, let God’s word transform your thinking daily. (Psalm 119)
Read God’s word everyday. Let me suggest an exercise. Starting with verse one, each day memorize a verse from Psalm 119. You can go through the Psalm twice in a year. I assure that you will cultivate a hunger for God’s word with this exercise. The Bible says, “He sent his word to heal us.” It is the cleansing showers of God’s word that adjusts our wrongful thinking.
5. Start Changing Your Attitude Today.
Attitudes are the combination of your thinking and emotions. It is your outlook on life. Attitude is a choice. No one has provided a better picture of attitude than Charles Swindoll:
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on my life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what people say or think or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company, church, or home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for the day. We cannot change our past… We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it. And so it is with you. We are in charge of our attitudes. (10)
David’s attitude about sin was cavalier. He had little regard for the impact it had on those around him. It would take a significant event to get his attention; a year later, that event was standing before him. God used Nathan, David’s friend and court prophet, to humble him. How far had he fallen? You only have to read Psalm 51, a companion reader to 2 Samuel 11, to get a glimpse. The Psalm drips the attitudinal changes that David would make.
This message is centered on choices that offer hope for living in Christ. Seek out some help. Surrender to Christ today. Regardless of the choices you’ve made in the past, it is never too late to take the road less traveled.
End Notes
(1) Source could not be found by this author.
(2) John Baker. Celebrate Recovery, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1998, pg. pg. 12
(3) Frank Minrth. In Pursuit of Happiness. Fleming H. Revell, Grand Rapids Michigan, 2004, pg. 12.
(4) Ibid, pg. 12
(5) Peacemakers Ministries is a non-profit organization that was founded in 1982 to equip Christians to respond to conflict biblically. This quote is taken from the Certification Practicum. Pg. 21
(6) Ibid, pg. 21
(7) Frank Minrth. In Pursuit of Happiness. Fleming H. Revell, Grand Rapids Michigan, 2004, pg. 12.
(8) Ibid, pg. 163
(9) Ibid, pg. 163
(10) Chuck Swindoll
