Recipe For Disaster

Recipe for Disaster

2 Samuel 11

Over the next two weeks I am going to be preaching a 2 part message…

The two sermons present the wrong way and the right way to avoid spiritual disaster.

This week I will start with the NOT TO sermon and I am calling it

“The Recipe for Disaster”

Next week we will look at the positive side of HOW TO and I will call it

“Recipe for Success”

Now we all know the recipe for disaster

In the 1960 some child hater invented a toy that was sure to break thousands of arms and bust thousands of heads.

He took a short piece of plywood and put rollerskate wheels on it and called it a skateboard.

But breaking arms and heads was not enough so some Einstein thought… hey, what if we make a bowl shaped ramp 50 feet tall on one side and twenty on the other, then we’ll fly down the tall side, jump the first ramp and fly 100 feet through the air, land on another ramp and shoot five stories up in the air and do flips and tricks before we land.

I mean… nobody saw disaster coming… right?

You take one dangerous board of death… plus crazy speed and a five story fall… that is a recipe for disaster

Or how about this one

Another Einstein gets the idea to make a children’s toy that is razor sharp and made to be thrown.

How many kids got darts in their head or eye?

But then some bozo comes up with the idea to make the dart 10 times bigger and heavier, and have kids throw them up in the air like missiles.

Half a pound of metal… WITH A POINT… and small kids running around throwing them

That is a recipe for disaster

ONE MORE

Somebody invented the YOYO…a fun and safe toy.

But them someone starts teaching kids to spin them round and round like weapons and thousands of heads get cracked

Then along comes one of those Einsteins who says… hey we can make this ever scarier and more deadly

We’ll double the danger by using two spheres and we will make them out of glass.

Then we’ll have kids smash them together at high rates of speed and velocity

AND PARENTS BOUGHT THESE THINGS FOR THEIR KIDS

Balls of glass on a string… plus centrifugal force… plus 2 feet from the kids eyes = Recipe for disaster

Hindsight is 20/20 and we now know how dangerous those toys were

I want to use that same hindsight to look at another recipe for disaster

You know the disaster as “David and Bathsheeba.”

I want us to look at the recipe that led to the disaster… a four step or ingredient recipe

The first ingredient in this recipe is

IN THE WRONG PLACE

David could have avoided the whole debacle if he had just been in the right place.

The scripture tells us In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.

David should not have been on that rooftop, and he never would have seen the beautiful woman bathing.

The bible plainly tells us that kings belonged out in the field, in battle, leading the troops.

And if David needed to be back at the palace for “kingly” reasons… he should have been IN PRAYER for his men

Or IN PLANNING for his men

Or IN BED so he could get back to the field

The fact that David was on that rooftop tells us he was where he should not be

How can we know if we are in the wrong place?

Sometimes you are in the wrong place and you know it… no one had to tell you

Maybe you are in the wrong place because you are out of place

Maybe it is the wrong place because YOU KNOW DANGER IS LURKING

And if you get in those places… bad things can happen

So the first ingredient in the recipe for disaster is…

BEING IN THE WRONG PLACE

Are you in the wrong place????

The second ingredient is…

ALONE

When it comes to morality and purity one of the most horrible words I know is ALONE

You and I would never walk ALONE through a dark back alley in Harlem or any large city….

We know better… we know how much more dangerous it is alone… we know there is safety in numbers

But in our spiritual life we have not learned that lesson

There is strength in numbers

Alone = danger

Have you ever realized how often the gospel accounts of Jesus tell us he was in crowds?