What's Lost When Sin Is Committed

Situations, circumstances, actions, and words sometime result in the lost of something. When you invest in a company that may not be doing so well; the result may be a lost of money. There may be days at work where you have several deadlines to meet, the school is on the line telling you that your child is sick and need to be picked up, your boss is standing in your office waiting for you to hang up, so that they can give you your next assignment, and your spouse is sending text messages asking what’s for dinner (notice I said spouse because we now live in a time where household responsibilities are shared that were traditionally done by mothers, some wife is saying “not in my house,” lol). But by the end of the day this type of situation will result in the lost of one’s mind.

If somebody were to stand in your face, call you names, talk about you and your mommy, and tell you that you’ll never amount to anything, then those words may result in the lost of your confidence, hope, and self-esteem. Young people when you think that you’re in love and break-up with your boyfriend or girlfriend, then you feel like you’ve lost the love of your life. And when you come home and play video games and watch television before doing your homework, those actions result in the lost of A’s & B’s, which also leads to the lost of your privileges to play video games, talk on the phone, and watch TV. So, we see that situations, circumstances, actions, and words can result in the lost of something physical, material, or mental.

This isn’t a new concept, since the beginning of time people have lost something as a result of their situations, actions, and words. When Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which God said was off limits, they lost their fellowship with God. When Moses hit the rock instead of speaking to it to bring forth water as God had commanded, he lost the opportunity to cross over to the Promised Land. When Samson told the sweet talking Delilah where his strength lied, it resulted in the lost of his dignity. And when Peter walked on water and took his off of Jesus, he lost his faith.

We don’t live in a perfect world; sometimes we gain and at times we lose. In our text we find the author of this psalm, David, lose some physical, mental, and spiritual things because of his sins. I believe we’ve all experienced or will experience the mental anguish, physical pain, or spiritual disconnection because of the sins we’ve committed. A person of the world might not understand what’s going on, but children of God discover in the Word of God, that sin causes these types of feelings and emotions. And not only does sin affect us mentally and spiritually, but it can affect us physically as well. If you don’t believe me let’s see. Paul told the Corinthians to self-examine themselves and confess to Christ so that they wouldn’t sin against the spiritual presence of the Lord while taking communion. Because they were taking the Lord’s Supper unworthily, Paul said this is the reason many of you are weak and sickly, and why many have died.

But in our psalm we find David, a great man who served a great nation under a great God, dealing with the aftermath of his sins. David had committed many sins in his lifetime just as we have, but David wrote this psalm while dealing with specific sins at a particular time in his life. While King David was about fifty years of age, he committed a series of terrible sins that led to terrible consequences. Psalm 51 was written after the prophet Nathan came and revealed to David that God knew about his sins and wasn’t pleased with his adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah.

If you’re not familiar with the story, one day David walked out on his balcony and from there he saw a woman bathing and the bible says she very beautiful, like my wife. This woman, Bathsheba, caught David’s attention to the point that he had to find out who she was. After enquiring about her, he sent his messengers to bring her to him and he laid with her. Now David wasn’t the only guilty party, because Bathsheba was bathing where she could be seen and we sin as well when we become a stumbling block to someone else, but that’s another message titled, “Watch Out, Before You Make Your Brother Fall.” But when Bathsheba became pregnant David tried to cover up his sin by having her husband sent home from battle, getting him drunk, and hoping that he would go home and sleep with his wife so that it could look like he was the baby daddy. When David’s plan didn’t work for two nights in a row, David sent Uriah back to the battlefield carrying his own death sentence in a letter that said to put Uriah in the heat of the battle, so that he could be killed.