Temptation Tango - Temptation Island - Part 3 Series

Temptation Island

Pt. 3 – Temptation Tango

I. Introduction

Temptation Island is a dangerous place because temptation, when we don’t understand it and learn to deal with it, separates, isolates, and will become the gateway to your demise if you don’t learn to move off the island!

We began by discussing the tricks the enemy uses on us. We did this so that we would understand how temptation works so that we wouldn’t be ignorant of the devil’s devices. So we said that:

- Temptation tricks us into passing the buck.

- Temptation tricks us into feeling special.

- Temptation tricks us into falling for hookers.

So last week we began dealing with how to defeat temptation.

Remember the 4 R’s? Refocus - Temptation’s power is wrapped up in distracting you from what is important. You must focus on what really matters. Resist. We have been given authority over the devil and we must learn to quit lying down for him! Resist until it is time to run. If that thing doesn’t rebuke . . . run for your life. Drop whatever you have to drop to get away. I hope some of you have been suffering from the runs this week. Then we must respect. Stop a moment and respect boundaries, blessings, and relationships. We can’t fall because it disrespects God and those we care about.

So let’s go one step further today. Today I want to take you away from an account of triumph over temptation to one which shows total defeat to temptation and see if we can’t learn some valuable truths.

II. Text

2 Samuel 11:1-17

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.

2 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, 3 and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, “She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” (Perfect example of no respect . . . David knew she was married so she was out of bounds and not only that she was married to someone who David was in relationship with . . . one of his mighty men. A man who has risked his life to faithfully serve David. No respect.) 4 Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness.) Then she went back home. 5 The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, “I am pregnant.”

6 So David sent this word to Joab: “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent him to David. 7 When Uriah came to him, David asked him how Joab was, how the soldiers were and how the war was going. 8 Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet.” So Uriah left the palace, and a gift from the king was sent after him. 9 But Uriah slept at the entrance to the palace with all his master’s servants and did not go down to his house.

10 David was told, “Uriah did not go home.” So he asked Uriah, “Haven’t you just come from a military campaign? Why didn’t you go home?” 11Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents, and my commander Joab and my lord’s men are camped in the open country. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and make love to my wife? As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing!”

12 Then David said to him, “Stay here one more day, and tomorrow I will send you back.” So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. 13 At David’s invitation, he ate and drank with him, and David made him drunk. But in the evening Uriah went out to sleep on his mat among his master’s servants; he did not go home.

14 In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. 15 In it he wrote, “Put Uriah out in front where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die. ”

16 So while Joab had the city under siege, he put Uriah at a place where he knew the strongest defenders were. 17 When the men of the city came out and fought against Joab, some of the men in David’s army fell; moreover, Uriah the Hittite died.

III. Temptation Tango

Perhaps more than any other account in Scripture this passage walks out the James 1 passage that I read to you in week one. Temptation comes from our own evil desires. Temptation gets pregnant, gives birth to sin and leads to death. David is described as a man after God’s own heart and he still falls to temptation. No one is impervious. No one is superman and bullet proof. We have to learn from his mistakes so that we don’t repeat them! In this account it is almost like David is in a dance with temptation. He is tap dancing around danger until he falls! We must stop the temptation tango. How?