Sin Has a Long Shelf-Life

14 In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. 15 In the letter he wrote, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, that he may be struck down, and die.” 16 And as Joab was besieging the city, he assigned Uriah to the place where he knew there were valiant men. 17 And the men of the city came out and fought with Joab, and some of the servants of David among the people fell. Uriah the Hittite also died. 18 Then Joab sent and told David all the news about the fighting. 19 And he instructed the messenger, “When you have finished telling all the news about the fighting to the king, 20 then, if the king’s anger rises, and if he says to you, ‘Why did you go so near the city to fight? Did you not know that they would shoot from the wall? 21 Who killed Abimelech the son of Jerubbesheth? Did not a woman cast an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died at Thebez? Why did you go so near the wall?’ then you shall say, ‘Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.’”

22 So the messenger went and came and told David all that Joab had sent him to tell. 23 The messenger said to David, “The men gained an advantage over us and came out against us in the field, but we drove them back to the entrance of the gate. 24 Then the archers shot at your servants from the wall. Some of the king’s servants are dead, and your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.” 25 David said to the messenger, “Thus shall you say to Joab, ‘Do not let this matter displease you, for the sword devours now one and now another. Strengthen your attack against the city and overthrow it.’ And encourage him.”

26 When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she lamented over her husband. 27 And when the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord. – 2 Samuel 11:14-27 ESV

The apostle James wrote this clear and convicting description of sin:

Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death. – James 1:14-15 NLT

This entire affair surrounding David’s life is recorded for posterity in chapter 11 of 2 Samuel and serves as a tragic illustration of James’ words. David had desires. He had a strong attraction for the opposite sex that he seemed to have a difficult time managing. It had already led to his growing collection of wives, and when he spied Bathsheba bathing on her rooftop, that desire kicked into high gear. The sight of her was not enough; he had to have her. His desires enticed him and lured him into committing an even greater sin than simply lusting after Bathsheba. The Greek word James used is exelkō and it refers to a hunter or fisherman drawing his prey out of hiding by tempting them with something they desire.

David took the bait and his desire gave birth to sinful actions. What began as a lustful look turned into adultery, but it didn’t stop there. His sin grew and produced further fruit. Bathsheba became pregnant and this unexpected news forced David to commit additional sins. He lied. He manipulated. He ordered her husband back from the front lines in the hope that Uriah’s reunion with Bathsheba might hide his own sin. When that didn’t work, David’s sin gave birth to death. He concocted a plan for Uriah to be killed in battle, and he sent Uriah back to the front unknowingly carrying his own death warrant in his hands.

This story is meant to shock us, but it should not surprise us. It shocks us because it involves David, the man after God’s own heart. But just because David held a special place in God’s heart does not mean that David was immune to sin. He was human and had flaws and weaknesses, and David’s sins proved deadly. In this case, David’s growing number of sins finally led to literal death, but not his own. It was Uriah who would die and, along with him, many other innocent soldiers who were unnecessarily exposed to the same deadly circumstances as Uriah.

David’s sin gave birth to death. The Greek word James used is apokyeō and it means “to beget, to bring forth from the womb, to produce or generate.” Like the unexpected pregnancy of Bathsheba, there would come a time when David’s sins would come to full term and deliver. There would be a byproduct of his sins.

It’s interesting to note that in the Garden of Eden God had warned Adam about the consequences of disobedience to His commands.

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” – Genesis 2:16-17 ESV

And the day came when Eve, Adam’s wife, listened to the enticing words of Satan and chose to disobey God and eat the forbidden fruit.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. – Genesis 3:6 ESV

The apostle Paul reminds us that Adam’s sin of eating the forbidden fruit along with his wife resulted in death.

When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned. – Romans 3:12 NLT

For the first time, death became an inevitable and unavoidable reality for mankind. Adam and Eve would know the pain of physical death. But it also brought into being the more hideous reality of spiritual death – eternal separation from God – the fate of all those who do not accept God’s gracious offer of salvation through the death of His Son, Jesus Christ.

But Adam and Eve didn’t die immediately; they lived long after their sin was committed. Yet their sin did give birth to death in the form of their own son’s murder at the hands of his brother. In a fit of jealousy and rage, Cain killed Abel. Sin always gives birth to death. It may not always produce physical death, but it will always result in spiritual death because sin separates us from God. It also causes suffering for others. It damages and destroys. It grows and spreads like cancer, infecting our lives and contaminating those around us.

Uriah was an innocent victim of David’s selfish sin but he was not alone. Other innocent men died because of David’s poor choices and lust-driven desire to satisfy his own desires. Yet, when David heard the news of the undeserved deaths of his own men, his response was anything but sorrowful.

“Well, tell Joab not to be discouraged. The sword devours this one today and that one tomorrow! Fight harder next time, and conquer the city!” – 2 Samuel 11:25 NLT

He displayed no remorse, repentance, or regret.

But David was far from done; he still had the pregnancy of Bathsheba to cover up. In his rush to conceal his sin, David had the grieving widow brought to the palace, providing her with no time to mourn the loss of her husband. With a hastily arranged wedding, David hoped to provide a logical explanation for her soon-to-be-obvious pregnancy. But while David thought his act of subterfuge had gone unnoticed, God knew, and God would discipline David for his sin.

The apostle Paul tells us that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23 ESV). Ultimately, he was referring to the spiritual death that follows our physical death. There is an eternal separation from God that will be the lot of all those who have sinned unless they have placed their faith in the redemptive work of Christ. Paul goes on to say that “the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

As Christians, we will inevitably sin in this life but we will never have to face eternal separation from God in the next life. Jesus has provided us with eternal life and the guarantee of our status as sons and daughters of God, and heirs of his Kingdom. But our sins will still have ramifications in this life. It will still produce death by destroying our joy, robbing us of contentment, damaging our relationships, and limiting our effectiveness for God. As Proverbs 11:19 reminds us, Genuine righteousness leads to life, but the pursuit of evil brings death” (Proverbs 11:19 BSB).

As long as David’s sin remained unconfessed and unforgiven, it would continue to produce death. It would kill David’s fellowship with God. It would destroy David’s peace and contentment. And it would result in yet another death – one that would come close to home and leave David devastated. Sin is deadly and, while as Christians, we may rest in the knowledge that spiritual death is no longer a threat to us, we must never underestimate the deadly effects of sin while we live on this earth. Our sins always have consequences.

English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Don’t Feed the Monster

1 In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.

2 It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. 3 And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” 4 So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned to her house. 5 And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”

6 So David sent word to Joab, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent Uriah to David. 7 When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab was doing and how the people were doing and how the war was going. 8 Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet.” And Uriah went out of the king’s house, and there followed him a present from the king. 9 But Uriah slept at the door of the king’s house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house. 10 When they told David, “Uriah did not go down to his house,” David said to Uriah, “Have you not come from a journey? Why did you not go down to your house?” 11 Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field. Shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing.” 12 Then David said to Uriah, “Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back.” So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. 13 And David invited him, and he ate in his presence and drank, so that he made him drunk. And in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house. – 2 Samuel 11:1-13 ESV

There is a saying found in the book of Proverbs that reads: “Stolen bread tastes sweet, but it turns to gravel in the mouth” (Proverbs 20:17 NLT). This little proverb is very applicable to the story found in chapter 11 of 2 Samuel, and what makes it even more interesting is that the book of Proverbs, in which it is found, was compiled by Solomon, the son of David and Bathsheba. It’s a simple proverb, but it carries profound weight. What is forbidden often has a strong appeal to us and, when we get what we desire, it can provide a short-lived sense of gratification. But the proverb goes on to warn that the forbidden, once consumed, quickly loses its appeal and can have serious consequences. Stolen bread that turns to gravel in the mouth would not only leave a disappointingly bad taste in the mouth but a face full of broken teeth as well.

The story of David and Bathsheba is probably one of the most well-known stories in the Bible. How would you like it if one of the worst sins you ever committed was chronicled in a book for everyone to read? One of the things about the Bible is its brutal honesty. It freely portrays the good, the bad, and the ugly of humanity and refuses to paint a rosy picture of mankind. Instead, it goes out of its way to reveal the presence of sin in the lives of even the most faithful characters.

All you have to do is look at the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Noah, Peter, and a host of other biblical characters to realize that sin was an ever-present problem even for the most godly individuals. David was no exception. As has been pointed out before, David had an inordinate love for the opposite sex. His attraction to women was his Achilles Heel, his weak spot. He had already amassed for himself a collection of wives who had fathered him many children, and this had been in direct disobedience to the command of God. Yet, it’s interesting to note that David’s growing collection of wives never seemed to scratch the itch he had. His lust was never satisfied and his physical desires were never satiated. He had more than enough wives to satisfy his sexual needs, yet there seemed to be in David an inordinate attraction for forbidden fruit, an overwhelming drive for “stolen bread.” He wanted what he could not have.

In the case of Bathsheba, David was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The passage makes it clear that this entire episode took place in the spring, “the time when kings go out to battle” (2 Samuel 11:1 ESV). But David had chosen to remain in Jerusalem while his troops went off the war. He was the warrior-king and it was his responsibility to lead his troops into battle. As the God-appointed protector of the kingdom, he had a role to fulfill but had delegated it to Joab.

This was the first step in David feeding the monster within. He knew he had a problem and was well aware of the lust that lurked within himself. By staying home in Jerusalem, David set himself up for failure. He created the ideal opportunity for his lust to get the better of him. He was not doing what he was supposed to be doing and he was not where he was supposed to be. As a result, Satan, the enemy, took advantage of the situation. He too was well aware of David’s weakness and cunningly cast the perfect bait to lure David into sin. The apostle James reminds us:

…remember, when you are being tempted, do not say, “God is tempting me.” God is never tempted to do wrong, and he never tempts anyone else. Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death. – James 1:13-15 NLT

Fish with full stomachs don’t usually take the bait. Well-fed fish are not as susceptible to the lure. But David’s lust for women had yet to be satisfied because he had a heart problem. He had an insatiable desire for women and no amount of wives would ever satisfy what was, in actuality, a spiritual problem. By staying in Jerusalem and refusing to go to war, David set himself up for failure. He found himself with idle time and an overactive libido.

As the story unfolds, David wakes in the afternoon from a nap and goes onto the roof of his palace where he spies a woman bathing on a nearby rooftop. Immediately, his desires entice him, he takes the bait, and he is reeled in. He saw and he had to have. He lusted and he had to satisfy that lust. Even when he is informed that Bathsheba is a married woman and the wife of one of his own soldiers, David is undeterred. The fact that she is married carries no weight with David. His lust overwhelms any sense of moral propriety and common decency and leads him to commit adultery.

But his unbridled lust failed to deliver on its promise of sweet satisfaction. In fact, the sweetness of the stolen bread turned to gravel in his mouth. In time, Bathsheba broke the news to David that she was pregnant. The text pointed out that this unethical and immoral liaison took place just after Bathsheba had completed the mandatory purification ceremony from her monthly menstrual cycle (Leviticus 15:19-30). This would have meant that she was ready to conceive, and she did.

This surprising bit of news threw David into overdrive. He immediately attempted to do damage control, trying to come up with a way to cover up his sin. He called Uriah home from the battlefront, naturally assuming that Uriah would make a beeline to his home. David was counting on the fact that Uriah, after an extended time of separation from his wife, would want to have sexual relations with her. But what David didn’t take into account was Uriah’s dedication to the crown and his allegiance to his fellow soldiers. He wasn’t going to allow himself the pleasure of his wife’s company while his brothers were still at war. Instead, he chose to sleep outside the doors of the palace alongside the servants of the king.

Uriah’s unexpected display of loyalty forced David to come up with Plan B. Uriah was invited to a feast at the palace where he was well-fed and served enough fine wine to leave him staggering drunk. But even in his inebriated state, Uriah refused to go home and satisfy his own sexual desires by sleeping with his wife. His love for Bathsheba would not deter him from his duty to his country and the crown.

What a contrast we see between Uriah’s behavior and that of David the king. It’s interesting to note that Uriah was a Hittite, a non-Jew, yet he proved to be more faithful than the man after God’s own heart. His response to David’s enticement to go home and be with his wife reveals a great deal about Uriah’s integrity. When given the opportunity to satisfy his own sexual desires, Uriah told the king:

“The Ark and the armies of Israel and Judah are living in tents, and Joab and my master’s men are camping in the open fields. How could I go home to wine and dine and sleep with my wife? I swear that I would never do such a thing.” – 2 Samuel 11:11 NLT

David’s attempt at a cover-up was blowing up in his face. His little deception was falling apart right before his eyes, and he was growing desperate. He was guilty of committing adultery but, rather than confess his sin, he took repeated steps to disguise it through deceit and dishonesty. David was attempting to get Uriah to sin against his own conscience, all in an attempt to conceal his own sin. David had made the mistake of feeding the monster within and now he was being devoured by it. His life was being consumed by his own sinful nature.

The apostle Paul gives us a less-than-attractive list of the “fruit” that comes as a result of giving our sinful nature free rein in our lives:

When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these.– Galatians 5:19-21 NLT

It all had begun with David being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Staying home in Jerusalem wasn’t necessarily a sin, but it proved to be an unwise decision for David. Had he gone off to war as he was supposed to do, he wouldn’t have been on his rooftop that day. He wouldn’t have seen Bathsheba bathing. He wouldn’t have lusted. He wouldn’t have committed adultery. And there would have been no sin to cover up. Take a look again at the passage in James: “Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death.”

Do you see the pattern?

Temptation – desires – enticement – sinful action – increased sin – death

The key to defeating the monster within is to starve it. Paul reminds us, “So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves” (Galatians 5:16 NLT). As long as David continued to feed the monster of lust, he would continue to be devoured by it. Yet, if he had chosen to listen to the Spirit of God and do what God had called him to do, this whole affair could have been avoided.

…you have no obligation to do what your sinful nature urges you to do. For if you live by its dictates, you will die. But if through the power of the Spirit you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. – Romans 8:12-14 NLT

English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

A Battle for the Heart

1 There was a long war between the house of Saul and the house of David. And David grew stronger and stronger, while the house of Saul became weaker and weaker.

2 And sons were born to David at Hebron: his firstborn was Amnon, of Ahinoam of Jezreel; 3 and his second, Chileab, of Abigail the widow of Nabal of Carmel; and the third, Absalom the son of Maacah the daughter of Talmai king of Geshur; 4 and the fourth, Adonijah the son of Haggith; and the fifth, Shephatiah the son of Abital; 5 and the sixth, Ithream, of Eglah, David’s wife. These were born to David in Hebron. – 2 Samuel 3:1-5 ESV

These five short verses reveal that David was fighting battles on two fronts. The first was the ongoing conflict he faced with the house of Saul. Ish-bosheth remained the recognized king of Israel, having received the endorsement of 11 of the 12 tribes, and Abner continued to serve as his military advisor.

But David faced another formidable foe that would prove far more difficult to defeat than Abner and his puppet king. The sad reality is that David’s second battle front was of his own making and he remained oblivious to its presence and danger. This “man after God’s own heart” had a heart problem. It wasn’t a physiological flaw in his actual heart but a moral weakness in his inner man.

This man, who had been handpicked by God and designated to be the next king of Israel suffered from a debilitating and oftentimes deadly condition that would prove to be far more dangerous than Ish-bosheth, Abner, and the armies of Israel. Despite Saul’s manic and rather obsessive-compulsive behavior, he had proven unsuccessful in eliminating David as a threat to his throne. Now, Saul’s son Ish-bosheth wore the crown and seemed to be blocking David’s path to his God-ordained destiny. But David’s real enemy lurked much closer to home, within his own household, and would prove to be the offspring of his own heart.

But this less-than-flattering fact seems to stand in conflict with God’s glowing assessment of David. Years earlier, God had the prophet Samuel inform the disobedient Saul that his reign would soon be coming to an end.

“But now your kingdom must end, for the LORD has sought out a man after his own heart. The LORD has already appointed him to be the leader of his people, because you have not kept the LORD’s command.” – 1 Samuel 13:14 NLT

Centuries later, the apostle Paul, while preaching to the Jews in the synagogue at Antioch, reconfirmed this divine designation of David as a man after His own heart.

“After that, God gave them judges to rule until the time of Samuel the prophet. Then the people begged for a king, and God gave them Saul son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, who reigned for forty years. But God removed Saul and replaced him with David, a man about whom God said, ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart. He will do everything I want him to do.” – Acts 13:20-22 NLT

But this lofty description of David did not mean he was perfect or without sin. Like any other man, David struggled with his own sinful nature. He could be prone to disobedience and doubt, just like anybody else. He had his own unique set of sins with which he struggled. One sin, in particular, is hinted at in verses 2 through 5 of 2 Samuel 3, and it would prove to be a constant source of temptation and testing for him: His love of women.

While David grew stronger in his military position over Abner and the house of Saul, he was literally sowing the seeds of dissent and future discord that would rip his still fledgling kingdom apart. It is important to note that God had made ample preparations for Israel to have a king. In fact, He had preordained it but knew that the people would tend to want the wrong kind of king. So, He provided them with very clear commands:

“You are about to enter the land the Lord your God is giving you. When you take it over and settle there, you may think, ‘We should select a king to rule over us like the other nations around us.’ If this happens, be sure to select as king the man the Lord your God chooses. You must appoint a fellow Israelite; he may not be a foreigner.

“The king must not build up a large stable of horses for himself or send his people to Egypt to buy horses, for the Lord has told you, ‘You must never return to Egypt.’ The king must not take many wives for himself, because they will turn his heart away from the Lord. And he must not accumulate large amounts of wealth in silver and gold for himself.” – Deuteronomy 17:14-117 NLT

Somewhat hidden and overlooked in this divine command is God’s prohibition against polygamy. But God made it crystal clear that His king “must not take many wives for himself, because they will turn his heart away from the Lord.”

Yet, the opening verses of chapter 3 reveal that the man after God’s own heart had a hidden heart problem. Verse 2 states that “sons were born to David at Hebron.” That rather innocent-sounding statement is fraught with unseen baggage that will prove to be an ongoing problem for David. A quick scan of the following verses reveals the invisible pathogen lurking in David’s heart.

These verses reveal that David had four different wives: Ahinoam of Jezreel, Abigail the widow of Nabal of Carmel, Maacah the daughter of Talmai king of Geshur, and Eglah. Not on this list is Michal, the daughter of Saul and David’s first wife. So effectively, at this early point in his reign, David had no less than five wives and, before he was done, the list would grow to as many as eight.

It doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to determine that David had an inordinate attraction to women, and he tended to act on it. One of his wives was Abigail, who was the widow of Nabal. This God-fearing woman had prevented David from killing her foolish husband, but when God took Nabal’s life, David wasted no time in taking Abigail as his wife.

David could be impulsive, and if we fast-forward to one of the most famous or infamous events in his life, it will become readily apparent that his impulsiveness led him to commit not only adultery but murder. Second Samuel 11 records the story of David and Bathsheba, a less-than-flattering moment in David’s life that would prove to be a personal low point.

At a time when David should have been leading his troops in battle, he determined to remain safely ensconced in his royal palace. One day, while walking on the roof, he saw a woman named Bathsheba bathing on the roof of her own home. Some speculate that this was not the first time David had witnessed this scene; it could have been the very reason he stayed home from battle. But on this occasion, David’s act of voyeurism prompted him to have Bathsheba brought to the palace. What happened next became a permanent blot on David’s record. Their illicit liaison resulted in an unexpected pregnancy but that would not be the worst part of the story.

Bathsheba’s husband, who served as a soldier in David’s army, was off at war, so it was going to be difficult to explain how his wife became pregnant. That’s when David launched an all-out campaign to cover his sin. But his strategy failed and he ultimately resorted to having Bathsheba’s husband murdered. He ordered that this innocent man be exposed to enemy fire on the front lines, thus opening the door for David to take Bathsheba as his wife.

This was not a stellar moment for David but it provides a glimpse into this highly vulnerable area of his life. His love affair with women would prove to be problematic throughout his reign. In fact, a close look at the list of his sons contains the names of Amnon and Absalom. These two brothers born to different mothers would grow up to cause David much pain and suffering. Second Samuel 13 contains the sad story of Amnon’s rape of Tamar, his half-sister. To avenge the rape of his own sister, Absalom orchestrated Amnon’s murder. which resulted in his own exile. He would later return, only to orchestrate the overthrow of his own father’s kingdom.

Verses 1-5 of chapter 3 appear innocent enough but they foreshadow a future filled with brokenness, pain, and suffering. It all began with David’s unwillingness to obey the command of God. This man after God’s heart decided to play fast and loose with God’s revealed will and while David never seemed to allow his many wives to lead him away from his love and worship for God, one of his sons would. Solomon would not only inherit his father’s throne but his addictive tendencies as well. In fact, Solomon would outdo his father in a major way, eventually amassing for himself a staggering harem of 700 wives and 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:1-3). These women, many of whom were from foreign nations and worshiped pagan gods, would eventually cause Solomon to erect their idols throughout his own kingdom – just as God had warned. The book of 1 Kings paints a very bleak picture of the closing days of Solomon’s reign.

Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the people of Israel, “You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.” Solomon clung to these in love. He had 700 wives, who were princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart. For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and did not wholly follow the Lord, as David his father had done. Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. And so he did for all his foreign wives, who made offerings and sacrificed to their gods. – 1 Kings 11:1-8 ESV

And it all began with David. A little compromise. A giving into the desires of the flesh. A refusal to obey God fully and heed His warning. The long-term ramifications of sin can be devastating. Yes, when David repented of his sin with Bathsheba, he was forgiven by God but the child she bore died in infancy. There are consequences to disobedience. God blessed David’s kingdom, but his many wives would prove to be a constant source of trouble in his life. His battle with the house of Saul would be nothing compared to the spiritual war he would wage as a result of his own sinful nature.

None of this was news to God. He was well aware of David’s strengths and weaknesses. He knew the condition of David’s heart better than David himself, and He was exposing all the flaws so that the man after His own heart might have a heart that beat fast for Him – and nothing else.

“The human heart is the most deceitful of all things,
    and desperately wicked.
    Who really knows how bad it is?
But I, the Lord, search all hearts
    and examine secret motives.
I give all people their due rewards,
    according to what their actions deserve.” – Jeremiah 17:9-10 NLT

English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

When Desire Replaces our Delight in God

39 When David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, “Blessed be the Lord who has avenged the insult I received at the hand of Nabal, and has kept back his servant from wrongdoing. The Lord has returned the evil of Nabal on his own head.” Then David sent and spoke to Abigail, to take her as his wife. 40 When the servants of David came to Abigail at Carmel, they said to her, “David has sent us to you to take you to him as his wife.” 41 And she rose and bowed with her face to the ground and said, “Behold, your handmaid is a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord.” 42 And Abigail hurried and rose and mounted a donkey, and her five young women attended her. She followed the messengers of David and became his wife.

43 David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel, and both of them became his wives. 44 Saul had given Michal his daughter, David’s wife, to Palti the son of Laish, who was of Gallim. – 1 Samuel 25:39-44  ESV

In these closing verses of chapter 25, we’re given a glimpse into an area of David’s life that would prove to be an ongoing problem throughout his life. He loved women, and this attraction to the opposite sex would be a constant thorn in his side even after becoming the king. He would even pass on this propensity to his son, Solomon, who took David’s obsession with women to a whole new level.

Now King Solomon loved many foreign women. Besides Pharaoh’s daughter, he married women from Moab, Ammon, Edom, Sidon, and from among the Hittites. The Lord had clearly instructed the people of Israel, “You must not marry them, because they will turn your hearts to their gods.” Yet Solomon insisted on loving them anyway. He had 700 wives of royal birth and 300 concubines. And in fact, they did turn his heart away from the Lord. – 1 Kings 11:1-3 NLT

And all of this, as the passage reflects, was in direct violation of God’s commands. Long before Saul wore the crown, God had warned the people of Israel that their future kings should abstain from the pagan practice of polygamy.

The king must not take many wives for himself, because they will turn his heart away from the LORD. – Deuteronomy 17:17 NLT

Yet, after David finally ascended the throne, he continued his practice of accumulating wives, in direct violation of God’s command.

After moving from Hebron to Jerusalem, David married more concubines and wives, and they had more sons and daughters. – 2 Samuel 5:13 NLT

David was a man after God’s own heart, but he was far from perfect. Women were his Achilles heel, and he found Abigail highly attractive. On top of that, she was godly, wise, assertive, brave, insightful, and a take-charge kind of woman. It also didn’t hurt that she was recently widowed. In fact, David didn’t seem to give Nabal’s body time to cool off before he made his move on Abigail, asking her to marry him.

The text ends with the statement, “David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel, and both of them became his wives” (1 Samuel 25:43 ESV). It also references Michal, David’s first wife, whom he left behind when he fled from Saul. She was eventually given to another man, but David was most likely unaware of that fact. So effectively, he had three wives at one time. Again, in direct disobedience to the will of God.

Why is this important? It provides us with an insight into the life of this man who would prove to be Israel’s greatest king and who, as has already been pointed out, was declared by God to be a man after His own heart. David loved God. He wanted to serve God. He had a deep desire to honor and obey God. But he also had a sin nature, just like the rest of us. One of David’s weak spots was his inordinate attraction to women. Satan would repeatedly use this weakness to his own advantage, tempting David to give in to his overactive libido. Over time, David would learn to justify his actions, excusing his sexual obsession as natural and normal. And yet, this sinful proclivity was a spiritual weakness, a chink in his armor that would make him an easy target for the Enemy.

When it comes to this issue, there are some less-than-flattering similarities between David and the Old Testament judge, Samson. During a time when the Jews were being tormented by the Philistines because of their disobedience, God raised up Samson to be their judge and deliverer. He was a powerful man, but he had a particular weakness.

One day when Samson was in Timnah, one of the Philistine women caught his eye. When he returned home, he told his father and mother, “A young Philistine woman in Timnah caught my eye. I want to marry her. Get her for me.” – Judges 14:1-2 NLT

Like David, Samson couldn’t keep his eyes or his hands off of women. His mother and father tried to reason with Samson and talk him out of choosing a wife who was a pagan, but he refused to listen.

“Get her for me! She looks good to me.” – Judges 14:3 NLT

Later on, we read, “One day Samson went to the Philistine town of Gaza and spent the night with a prostitute” (Judges 16:1 NLT). And then, “Some time later Samson fell in love with a woman named Delilah, who lived in the valley of Sorek” (Judges 16:4 NLT). These two women would prove to be thorns in Samson’s side, causing him much grief and sorrow. In time, his dalliance with Delilah would result in his own death.

David also struggled with a lustful and almost lascivious attraction to women. The most infamous story concerning David and his love affair with the opposite sex involves his affair with Bathsheba. David was the king. He was rich, powerful, and happily married to several women already. But one day, as he walked on the rooftop patio of his palace, he spied Bathsheba bathing alfresco. David was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The passage states, “In the spring of the year, when kings normally go out to war, David sent Joab and the Israelite army to fight the Ammonites…However, David stayed behind in Jerusalem” (2 Samuel 11:1 NLT).

David wasn’t where he was supposed to be. He was the warrior-king, but instead of going into battle with the Ammonites, he would end up losing a battle with his own lusts. His lust for Bathsheba quickly turned to action and he ended up having sex with her. When their affair resulted in her pregnancy, he began a cover-up campaign, that eventually led him to have her husband, a faithful soldier in his army, purposely exposed and killed on the front lines of battle – all so David could marry his wife and cover up his illicit affair.

James provides us with a stark explanation of how this whole process works.

Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death. – James 1:14-15 NLT

David was a man after God’s own heart, but he had a problem. His heart was divided. He loved women. He saw them as a source of satisfaction, comfort, pleasure, and self-worth. They made him feel good. They provided him with companionship. Perhaps they helped fulfill his need for conquest. Whatever drove his love affair with women would end up distracting him from what should have been his primary focus: His love for and dedication to God.

The chapter ends with the statement that “Saul had given Michal his daughter, David's wife, to Palti the son of Laish, who was of Gallim” (1 Samuel 25:44 ESV). This is important because, while it might be easy to use this as an explanation of why David took Abigail to be his wife, it falls short. Years later, when David became king and Saul was dead, he sent for Michal, demanding that Ish-bosheth, the sole remaining heir to the throne of Saul, hand her over.

So David sent messengers to Ish-bosheth, Saul’s son, saying, “Give me my wife Michal, to whom I was betrothed for a hundred foreskins of the Philistines.”  Ish-bosheth sent and took her from her husband, from Paltiel the son of Laish. But her husband went with her, weeping as he went, and followed her as far as Bahurim. Then Abner said to him, “Go, return.” So he returned. – 2 Samuel 3:14-16 ESV

Even though David had married multiple wives since his departure from Saul’s palace, he couldn’t stop thinking about Michal. He had to have her, so he had her forcibly removed from her husband. Like so many of David’s decisions regarding women, this one would prove to be less than ideal. Forcibly removed from her new husband, Michal would end up despising David and his God. Their marriage would produce little in the way of love and no offspring.

David had the propensity to be driven by desire, and that desire would prove to be a distraction throughout his life. Even in his old age, as he neared the point of death, an attractive woman would play a significant role in his life.

King David was now very old, and no matter how many blankets covered him, he could not keep warm. So his advisers told him, “Let us find a young virgin to wait on you and look after you, my lord. She will lie in your arms and keep you warm.”

So they searched throughout the land of Israel for a beautiful girl, and they found Abishag from Shunem and brought her to the king. The girl was very beautiful, and she looked after the king and took care of him. But the king had no sexual relations with her. – 1 Kings 1:1-4 NLT

We all have weaknesses. Each of us has our spiritual Achilles heel, which our enemy, Satan knows about and takes full advantage of at every opportunity. He tempts, lures, and entices us. He baits the hook with the very thing we find most attractive. It may be sex, popularity, material possessions, pleasure, a sense of accomplishment, or power. In essence, our weakness is nothing more than an insight into what we have made an idol in our life – a false god that serves as a stand-in or substitute for the one true God. For David, women were his go-to choice for satisfaction, self-worth, and a sense of joy. Sexual pleasure was his idol of choice. What is yours? What do you turn to other than God? What do you worship in place of God? Anything we worship in place of  God robs him of glory. It becomes a weakness in our life that must be confessed and removed. When God said, “You must not have any other god but me” (Exodus 20:3 NLT), He meant it, and David would have to learn to believe it.

English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The God-Given Gift of Love and Sexuality

She

1 Oh that you were like a brother to me
    who nursed at my mother’s breasts!
If I found you outside, I would kiss you,
    and none would despise me.
2 I would lead you and bring you
    into the house of my mother—
    she who used to teach me.
I would give you spiced wine to drink,
    the juice of my pomegranate.
3 His left hand is under my head,
    and his right hand embraces me!
4 I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
    that you not stir up or awaken love
    until it pleases.

5 Who is that coming up from the wilderness,
    leaning on her beloved?

Under the apple tree I awakened you.
There your mother was in labor with you;
    there she who bore you was in labor.

6 Set me as a seal upon your heart,
    as a seal upon your arm,
for love is strong as death,
    jealousy is fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
    the very flame of the Lord.
7 Many waters cannot quench love,
    neither can floods drown it.
If a man offered for love
    all the wealth of his house,
    he would be utterly despised. – Song of Solomon 8:1-7 ESV

As this epic poem begins to wrap up, the rhetoric within it amps up. It seems that the further along in the dialogue we get, the more shocking the language and imagery becomes. But I don’t think this is all for the shock value. These words are penned by two people who are expressing their deep and abiding affection for one another. Nothing is hidden. There are no subjects that are off-limits or taboo. While this book was divinely inspired like all the other books in the canon of Scripture, when Solomon wrote it, he had no idea it would become part of the Bible, the world’s most popular and widely read book of all time.

So, the imagery and language contained within the Song of Solomon have always confused and disturbed its readers. It seems out of place among all the other books of the Bible. Its content is too controversial and even considered X-rated by some. There are those who avoid this book like the plague. Others, in an attempt to resolve its shocking use of sexual imagery and language, have spiritualized its content to the point where it no longer makes much sense. That is not to say there is no underlying spiritual message contained within the pages of the Song of Solomon but that the graphic and sometimes lurid nature of its content should not be dismissed as nothing more than one lengthy metaphor.

Those who approach this book with a puritanical zeal, wishing to reinterpret its language as nothing more than a symbol of God’s love for His chosen people or Christ’s love for His bride, the Church, end up dehumanizing and diminishing its message. In some sense, their attempt to de-sexualize its content ended up devaluing much of its message. It’s amazing that even today, in our highly sexualized culture, this book still comes across as inappropriate and offensive. There is still a sense in which Christians believe that any talk about the human body or sexuality is inappropriate for polite conversation. But the content in this book is difficult to ignore because it confronts our prudish sensibilities and makes us squirm.  All its talk of intimate body parts and passionate love-making makes us uncomfortable.

Yet, the Song of Solomon is as much a part of the canon of Scripture as the Psalms or the four Gospels. It too was “breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16 ESV). So the question becomes, what is this book attempting to teach us? In what ways could it be trying to reprove and correct us? How could its content be used to train us in righteousness? 

The answers to these questions must be found in the prevailing message of the book. It is impossible to completely dismiss the fact that this is a love poem. It is blatantly and sometimes embarrassingly about the love between a man and a woman. But that should not make us uncomfortable. Love is of God because God is love, and the sexual union between one man and one woman was His idea. But like all of God’s good and gracious gifts, this one was irreparably damaged by the entrance of sin into the world. Satan has taken what God intended for good and turned it into a self-seeking, soul-destroying weapon in his battle against humanity.

Jesus stated, “The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life” (John 10:10 NLT). God created man and woman and endowed them with the capacity for procreation, but He also blessed them with the ability to love and enjoy the intimacy and physicality of the sexual relationship. It was not to be some primal act of hormonal urges designed to propagate the species. God equipped Adam and Eve with the physiological and psychological tools they would need to make more of their kind and to enjoy themselves in the process. That is what the Song of Solomon is all about.

Even in Solomon’s day, prudishness reigned supreme. There was certain actions that were inappropriate and deemed unacceptable in public. His love-struck wife makes that painfully clear when she bluntly states, “Oh, I wish you were my brother, who nursed at my mother’s breasts. Then I could kiss you no matter who was watching, and no one would criticize me” (Song of Solomon 8:1 NLT). This woman couldn’t keep her hands off of her husband. Even in public, she had a difficult time controlling her urge to kiss him. Her rather strange-sounding wish for him to be her brother is just her way of venting her frustration. In her culture, it was fully acceptable for a sister to show affection to her male sibling, even in public. But if she dared to display any signs of affection to her husband while others were watching, she would be considered sex-crazed and lacking in discretion.

She goes on to describe her and her “brother” engaging in intimate activities in their childhood home. The language she uses is blunt and highly suggestive, no matter how much you try to couch it in metaphorical terms. She wants everyone to know just how much she loves her husband. Her discussion of public displays of affection may make us uncomfortable but it should also convict us. The longer her marriage lasts, the more intense her love for her husband grows, and she wants to shout their love from the rooftops. She is proud of and pleased with the love of her life.

This is not a woman for whom marital love has run out of steam. Her sexual desire has not diminished over time. Her husband’s aging body has not lost its appeal for her. The passion of her youth has not gone away and she has spent it on someone else. She remains totally committed to her marriage and deeply in love with her husband.

In a world driven by casual sex, no-fault divorce, and short-term commitments, this woman is a breath of fresh air, and her take on love has never been more timely and needed.

For love is as strong as death,
    its jealousy as enduring as the grave.
Love flashes like fire,
    the brightest kind of flame.
Many waters cannot quench love,
    nor can rivers drown it. – Song of Solomon 8:6-7 NLT

For some reason, we want to separate love from sex. Even Christians can end up viewing sex as somehow tainted and stained by its close association with our fallen human bodies. This dualistic mindset causes us to view love as some kind of separate and distinct characteristic that operates independently from our physical desires and passions. Ever since the fall, mankind has ended up associating sex with lust rather than love. Instead of seeing the sexual act as a gift from God, we have demonized and devalued it to the point of sacrilege. Human sexuality is a gift from God. To view it as somehow dirty or damaged is to question the goodness of God. True love, which includes the physical intimacy between a man and a woman, is a remarkable gift from our Creator-God. It is not to be despised. It is not to be treated with disdain or disgust. Love, as designed by God in the marriage relationship, is priceless value and cannot be bought or sold.

If a man tried to buy love
    with all his wealth,
    his offer would be utterly scorned. – Song of Solomon 8:7 NLT

But it is to be enjoyed and protected at all costs – for a lifetime.

English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Well Worth the Wait

She

1 On my bed by night
I sought him whom my soul loves;
    I sought him, but found him not.
2 I will rise now and go about the city,
    in the streets and in the squares;
I will seek him whom my soul loves.
    I sought him, but found him not.
3 The watchmen found me
    as they went about in the city.
“Have you seen him whom my soul loves?”
4 Scarcely had I passed them
    when I found him whom my soul loves.
I held him, and would not let him go
    until I had brought him into my mother’s house,
    and into the chamber of her who conceived me.
5 I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
    by the gazelles or the does of the field,
that you not stir up or awaken love
    until it pleases.” – Song of Solomon 3:1-5 ESV

As stated earlier, the language of this poem sometimes makes it difficult to discern a timeline or logical sequential order in the dialogue. The opening verses of chapter three have the maiden disclosing the content of a recent dream that had turned into a nightmare. Even in her subconscious state, she can’t get the image of her lover out of her mind. But in her dream, she found herself searching everywhere for the love of her life but to no avail. She even imagined getting out of bed and wandering the streets of the city in the middle of the night. One can almost see this young maiden, still dressed in her nightgown, oil lamp in hand, searching through the darkened alleyways of her hometown in a desperate attempt to locate the one whom her soul loves.

In her dream, she had waited with eager anticipation, hoping that her lover would show up but the hours passed and he remained a no-show. It was his failure to appear that prompted her desperate nocturnal search-and-rescue mission. She looked high and low but to no avail; he was nowhere to be found. At one point, she imagined herself coming across the nightwatchmen as they made their rounds. These men, surprised to find a young maiden out by herself in the middle of the night, must have questioned her sanity and intentions, but she is more interested in whether they solve the riddle of her missing lover.

A Freudian psychologist would have a field day with this dream. They would probably assess that this woman has a pathological attachment to this young man that is producing an unhealthy co-dependence. She can’t live without him and she can’t get him out of her mind. Their diagnosis might include some form of obsessive-compulsive behavior.

But the truth is, she is simply deeply in love and can’t imagine life without this young man. She desperately wants to be married and can’t wait until the day when he pops the question, they set the date, and the long-awaited day arrives. In her dream, she compresses the timeline and takes matters into her own hands, by locating her long-lost lover, taking him by the hand, and leading him to the nearest bed, which just happens to be the one on which she was conceived. This young virgin shares the intimate details of her dream, as she describes taking her lover to bed. 

The bluntness of her language makes us a bit uncomfortable and could leave us with the impression that this young lady has a lust problem. But the content of her dream only illustrates the longing of her heart. Her relationship with Solomon has moved well beyond puppy love. These are not two adolescents experiencing their first high school crush; they are soul mates who have determined their lives have been inextricably linked together for life. They have been divinely destined to be “one flesh” (Mark 10:8). The graphic and somewhat lurid content of the dream does not suggest that this couple had been intimately and immorally involved with one another, but it does make it clear that consummating their relationship was on her mind. She wanted to experience everything that marriage had to offer, and her honest admission that she dreamed of sexual intimacy with her lover should not be taken as a moral indiscretion but as a barometer of the depth of her love. She was more than ready and willing to give herself to her lover but would hold those passions in check until their wedding night.

She even caps the recounting of her dream with its steamy conclusion by encouraging her fellow maidens to keep their physical desires under control and “not to awaken love until the time is right” (Song of Solomon 3:5 NLT). Her dream revealed her heart’s desire but she was not going to let her passions get the best of her. She couldn’t control her sub-conscious dreams but, in real life, she was committed to maintaining her purity and protecting the sanctity of the marriage bed. While she lived long before the Book of Hebrews was written, she would have agreed wholeheartedly with its warning.

Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. – Hebrews 13:4 ESV

One must not forget that this is a book of poetry that chronicles the love between a man and a woman. It is meant to be intimate and uncomfortably revealing. There is a certain sense in which the reader is meant to feel a bit awkward as if they are intruding on the private conversations of two lovers. But the intent of the poem is not to embarrass or produce guilt but to showcase the amazing nature of the God-ordained love between a man and a woman.

It’s interesting to note that Solomon, long after penning the content of this book, wrote another book entitled Ecclesiastes. It was written very late in his life after he had amassed great wealth, world renown, and all the comforts that can come with life. He was wise and incredibly well-off, but he lacked any sense of joy, peace, or contentment. He had spent his entire adult life searching for significance and satisfaction but could only conclude, “I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind” (Ecclesiastes 1:14 ESV). By this point in his life, he had accumulated all kinds of treasures, including 700 wives and 300 concubines, but nothing brought him satisfaction. Sex had long ago replaced love as a driving factor in his life. He sadly confessed, “whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure” (Ecclesiastes 2:10 ESV).

Later in this same book, Solomon seems to reminisce about the days when he found satisfaction and significance in the arms of his young maiden. Those had been simpler days when two was more than enough.

Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble. Likewise, two people lying close together can keep each other warm. But how can one be warm alone? A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. – Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 NLT

All the treasures of the world cannot replace or replicate the God-ordained love between a man and a woman. Marriage was God’s idea from the beginning. In the garden, God declared His intentions for the indissoluble union between a man and a woman.

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” – Genesis 2:24 ESV

The young maiden dreamed of the day when she and Solomon could consummate their love and solidify their union. She knew she had to wait and do things according to God’s divine will but that did not remove the desire or diminish her longings for all that God had in store for them. The marriage was a gift from God and she couldn’t wait to open it.

English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Destroyed By the Very Thing You Love

22 Therefore, O Oholibah, thus says the Lord God: “Behold, I will stir up against you your lovers from whom you turned in disgust, and I will bring them against you from every side: 23 the Babylonians and all the Chaldeans, Pekod and Shoa and Koa, and all the Assyrians with them, desirable young men, governors and commanders all of them, officers and men of renown, all of them riding on horses. 24 And they shall come against you from the north with chariots and wagons and a host of peoples. They shall set themselves against you on every side with buckler, shield, and helmet; and I will commit the judgment to them, and they shall judge you according to their judgments. 25 And I will direct my jealousy against you, that they may deal with you in fury. They shall cut off your nose and your ears, and your survivors shall fall by the sword. They shall seize your sons and your daughters, and your survivors shall be devoured by fire. 26 They shall also strip you of your clothes and take away your beautiful jewels. 27 Thus I will put an end to your lewdness and your whoring begun in the land of Egypt, so that you shall not lift up your eyes to them or remember Egypt anymore.

28 “For thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will deliver you into the hands of those whom you hate, into the hands of those from whom you turned in disgust, 29 and they shall deal with you in hatred and take away all the fruit of your labor and leave you naked and bare, and the nakedness of your whoring shall be uncovered. Your lewdness and your whoring 30 have brought this upon you, because you played the whore with the nations and defiled yourself with their idols. 31 You have gone the way of your sister; therefore I will give her cup into your hand. 32 Thus says the Lord God:

“You shall drink your sister’s cup
    that is deep and large;
you shall be laughed at and held in derision,
    for it contains much;
33 you will be filled with drunkenness and sorrow.
A cup of horror and desolation,
    the cup of your sister Samaria;
34 you shall drink it and drain it out,
    and gnaw its shards,
    and tear your breasts;

for I have spoken, declares the Lord God. 35 Therefore thus says the Lord God: Because you have forgotten me and cast me behind your back, you yourself must bear the consequences of your lewdness and whoring.” – Ezekiel 23:22-35 ESV

Both Israel and Judah had developed the habit of reaching out to foreign powers when they found themselves in need of military assistance. Rather than relying upon their omnipotent God, they sought aid from the superpowers of their day. Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon were three of the most powerful nations on earth at the time and each of them lusted after the land of Canaan, viewing it as prime real estate to add to their growing empires.

God uses sardonic imagery to describe the southern kingdom of Judah as a love-struck woman fawning over the glamour shots of the handsome Babylonian soldiers in their impressive military uniforms.

“She saw men carved on the wall, images of the Chaldeans carved in bright red,  wearing belts on their waists and flowing turbans on their heads, all of them looking like officers, the image of Babylonians whose native land is Chaldea. When she saw them, she lusted after them and sent messengers to them in Chaldea. The Babylonians crawled into bed with her. They defiled her with their lust…” – Ezekiel 23:14-17 NLT

While God portrays Judah as a love-struck, starry-eyed woman with lust on her mind, His assessment of the southern kingdom was spot-on. There had been a time when King Ahaz of Judah had reached out to the Assyrians in hopes that they could assist him in his ongoing conflict with the northern kingdom of Israel.

King Ahaz sent messengers to King Tiglath-pileser of Assyria with this message: “I am your servant and your vassal. Come up and rescue me from the attacking armies of Aram and Israel.” Then Ahaz took the silver and gold from the Temple of the Lord and the palace treasury and sent it as a payment to the Assyrian king. – 2 Kings 16:7-8 NLT

Both Judah and Israel were guilty of viewing these foreign powers as their preferred source of salvation. But God had used the prophet, Jeremiah, to remind them that these “love affairs” rarely produced the outcome they desired.

“What have you gained by your alliances with Egypt
    and your covenants with Assyria?
What good to you are the streams of the Nile
    or the waters of the Euphrates River?” – Jeremiah 2:18 NLT

Yet, they never seemed to learn from their mistakes. They would get in bed with these attractive-looking saviors, only to find out that their desires were driven by lust and not love.

“…after she was defiled by them, she became disgusted with them. When she lustfully exposed her nakedness, I was disgusted with her, just as I had been disgusted with her sister.” – Ezekiel 23:17-18 NLT

Once the thrill of the hunt was over, the attraction was quickly replaced by loathing. Regret would eventually set in, but it never seemed to diminish Judah’s lustful quest for power and protection from outside sources. So, God warns them that He is going to use their former lovers to destroy them.

“I am about to stir up against you the lovers with whom you were disgusted; I will bring them against you from every side: the Babylonians and all the Chaldeans, Pekod, Shoa, and Koa, and all the Assyrians with them, desirable young men, all of them governors and officials, officers and nobles, all of them riding on horses.” – Ezekiel 23:22-23 NLT

At the time Ezekiel penned these words, the Assyrians had been subsumed by the more powerful Babylonian empire. Pekod, Shoa, and Koa are references to tribes that lived in what was formerly Assyrian territory but were now part of the rapidly expanding Babylonian empire. By this time, the northern kingdom of Israel had already fallen to the Assyrians, and God is warning the rebellious northern kingdom of Judah that they are about to feel the full weight of His wrath in the form of the Babylonians.

“They will attack you with weapons, chariots, wagons, and with a huge army; they will array themselves against you on every side with large shields, small shields, and helmets. I will assign them the task of judgment; they will punish you according to their laws.” – Ezekiel 23:24 NLT

And God makes it clear that all of this will be His doing.

“I will direct my jealous anger against you, and they will deal with you in rage.” – Ezekiel 23:25 NLT

The Babylonians will become His instrument of judgment. The very nation that Judah turned to for hope and help would become their destroyer. Their former lover would turn on them and become their executioner. And the destruction would be devastating. God describes Judah as being defaced and deformed, having its former symbols of beauty and vitality violently marred.

“They will strip your clothes off you and take away your beautiful jewelry.” – Ezekiel 23:26 NLT

And the book of 2 Kings describes exactly what happened when that fateful day finally arrived.

As the Lord had said beforehand, Nebuchadnezzar carried away all the treasures from the Lord’s Temple and the royal palace. He stripped away all the gold objects that King Solomon of Israel had placed in the Temple. King Nebuchadnezzar took all of Jerusalem captive, including all the commanders and the best of the soldiers, craftsmen, and artisans—10,000 in all. Only the poorest people were left in the land. – 2 Kings 24:13-14 NLT

In this chapter, God has repeatedly referred to Judah by the name Oholibah, which means “my tent is in her.” The coming destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians was going to leave God’s “tent” or temple completely destroyed. Nebuchadnezzar’s forces would tear it down stone by stone, leveling this once-magnificent edifice to rubble and leaving its former beauty unrecognizable.

On August 14 of that year, which was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard and an official of the Babylonian king, arrived in Jerusalem. He burned down the Temple of the Lord, the royal palace, and all the houses of Jerusalem. He destroyed all the important buildings in the city. Then he supervised the entire Babylonian army as they tore down the walls of Jerusalem on every side. Then Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, took as exiles the rest of the people who remained in the city, the defectors who had declared their allegiance to the king of Babylon, and the rest of the population. But the captain of the guard allowed some of the poorest people to stay behind to care for the vineyards and fields. – 2 Kings 25:8-12 NLT

The people of Judah thought the temple was their get-out-of-jail-free card. They truly believed it gave them carte blanche and allowed them to do as they pleased. The prophet Jeremiah accused them of boldly proclaiming, “The LORD’s Temple is here! The LORD’s Temple is here!” (Jeremiah 7:4 NLT). It was their ultimate security blanket. Yet, God had repeatedly warned them that the temple would not and could not save them.

“Don’t be fooled into thinking that you will never suffer because the Temple is here. It’s a lie! Do you really think you can steal, murder, commit adultery, lie, and burn incense to Baal and all those other new gods of yours, and then come here and stand before me in my Temple and chant, ‘We are safe!’—only to go right back to all those evils again? Don’t you yourselves admit that this Temple, which bears my name, has become a den of thieves? Surely I see all the evil going on there. I, the LORD, have spoken!” – Jeremiah 7:8-11 NLT

And the day would come when God’s warnings came to fruition. He would bring about the destruction of the house that bore His name, and He would destroy the very people who had repeatedly defamed His name before the nations.

English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Not for the Faint of Heart

1 The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, there were two women, the daughters of one mother. 3 They played the whore in Egypt; they played the whore in their youth; there their breasts were pressed and their virgin bosoms handled. 4 Oholah was the name of the elder and Oholibah the name of her sister. They became mine, and they bore sons and daughters. As for their names, Oholah is Samaria, and Oholibah is Jerusalem.

5 “Oholah played the whore while she was mine, and she lusted after her lovers the Assyrians, warriors 6 clothed in purple, governors and commanders, all of them desirable young men, horsemen riding on horses. 7 She bestowed her whoring upon them, the choicest men of Assyria all of them, and she defiled herself with all the idols of everyone after whom she lusted. 8 She did not give up her whoring that she had begun in Egypt; for in her youth men had lain with her and handled her virgin bosom and poured out their whoring lust upon her. 9 Therefore I delivered her into the hands of her lovers, into the hands of the Assyrians, after whom she lusted. 10 These uncovered her nakedness; they seized her sons and her daughters; and as for her, they killed her with the sword; and she became a byword among women, when judgment had been executed on her.

11 “Her sister Oholibah saw this, and she became more corrupt than her sister in her lust and in her whoring, which was worse than that of her sister. 12 She lusted after the Assyrians, governors and commanders, warriors clothed in full armor, horsemen riding on horses, all of them desirable young men. 13 And I saw that she was defiled; they both took the same way. 14 But she carried her whoring further. She saw men portrayed on the wall, the images of the Chaldeans portrayed in vermilion, 15 wearing belts on their waists, with flowing turbans on their heads, all of them having the appearance of officers, a likeness of Babylonians whose native land was Chaldea. 16 When she saw them, she lusted after them and sent messengers to them in Chaldea. 17 And the Babylonians came to her into the bed of love, and they defiled her with their whoring lust. And after she was defiled by them, she turned from them in disgust. 18 When she carried on her whoring so openly and flaunted her nakedness, I turned in disgust from her, as I had turned in disgust from her sister. 19 Yet she increased her whoring, remembering the days of her youth, when she played the whore in the land of Egypt 20 and lusted after her lovers there, whose members were like those of donkeys, and whose issue was like that of horses. 21 Thus you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when the Egyptians handled your bosom and pressed your young breasts.” – Ezekiel 23:1-21 ESV

This chapter needs a graphic-warning label. It is full of sexual imagery and illicit language that makes it difficult to read and even harder to reconcile as content befitting God’s Word. But its message was meant to produce shock and disgust by comparing the behavior of God’s people with the grossest and most unacceptable sexual sins imaginable.

God begins this unflattering portrayal of His people by alluding to them by different names. The northern kingdom of Israel becomes Oholah and the southern kingdom of Judah becomes Oholibah. These pseudonyms were meant to depict each kingdom in a negative light, portraying them as two sisters who each display a penchant for sexual promiscuity and immorality. Oholah means “her tent,” and is meant to represent Samaria, the capital city of the northern kingdom. This designation most likely refers to King Jeroboam’s determination to set up his own houses of worship in Israel to prevent the people from returning to Jerusalem to worship at the temple. His actions are recorded in 1 Kings.

…on the advice of his counselors, the king made two gold calves. He said to the people, “It is too much trouble for you to worship in Jerusalem. Look, Israel, these are the gods who brought you out of Egypt!”

He placed these calf idols in Bethel and in Dan—at either end of his kingdom. But this became a great sin, for the people worshiped the idols, traveling as far north as Dan to worship the one there.

Jeroboam also erected buildings at the pagan shrines and ordained priests from the common people—those who were not from the priestly tribe of Levi. And Jeroboam instituted a religious festival in Bethel, held on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, in imitation of the annual Festival of Shelters in Judah. There at Bethel he himself offered sacrifices to the calves he had made, and he appointed priests for the pagan shrines he had made. So on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, a day that he himself had designated, Jeroboam offered sacrifices on the altar at Bethel. He instituted a religious festival for Israel, and he went up to the altar to burn incense. – 1 Kings 12:18-31 NLT

In a sense, Jeroboam, the first king to rule over the northern kingdom, made the grave error of erecting an alternative house of worship, tempting the people to reject Yahweh as their god.

By contrast, the name Oholibah means “my tent is in her,” and stands for Jerusalem, the capital city of Judah where God’s temple was located. It was at this one “tent” that the people of Judah were to worship the one true God: Yahweh. But like their northern neighbors, the Judahites had proven themselves to be unfaithful. 

This entire chapter acts as a metaphorical version of Jeremiah 3:6-11, where God outlines the sins of Israel and Judah.

During the reign of King Josiah, the Lord said to me, “Have you seen what fickle Israel has done? Like a wife who commits adultery, Israel has worshiped other gods on every hill and under every green tree. I thought, ‘After she has done all this, she will return to me.’ But she did not return, and her faithless sister Judah saw this. She saw that I divorced faithless Israel because of her adultery. But that treacherous sister Judah had no fear, and now she, too, has left me and given herself to prostitution. Israel treated it all so lightly—she thought nothing of committing adultery by worshiping idols made of wood and stone. So now the land has been polluted. But despite all this, her faithless sister Judah has never sincerely returned to me. She has only pretended to be sorry. I, the Lord, have spoken!”

Then the Lord said to me, “Even faithless Israel is less guilty than treacherous Judah!” – Jeremiah 3:6-11 NLT

In the Ezekiel passage, God describes Ohalah and Oholibah as His “wives.” This is not intended to be a divine endorsement of polygamy but is simply meant to be a picture of the intimate relationship between God and His chosen people. The two kingdoms comprised the 12 tribes of Israel and they had been set apart as His own. But God accuses them of having committed adultery. The northern kingdom, allured by the power and prestige of the Assyrian Empire, made unsanctioned alliances with this up-and-coming global power. God deems these dalliances as nothing short of adulterous.

“Oholah lusted after other lovers instead of me, and she gave her love to the Assyrian officers.” – Ezekiel 23:5 NLT

The kings of Judah literally prostrated themselves as the feet of the Assyrian kings, hoping to evade defeat at their hands. This scene is depicted in The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser,  which shows King Jehu of Israel bowing in submission before King Shalmaneser III of Assyria and giving him tribute money.

The primary problem with these alliances was that they encouraged the people to place their hopes in someone other than God. Secondarily, they led to idolatry. Each time Israel made a treaty with a foreign power, they ended up embracing the false gods of their newfound “lovers.” 

“…she prostituted herself with the most desirable men of Assyria, worshiping their idols and defiling herself.” – Ezekiel 23:7 NLT

And God reveals that this tendency to spiritual adultery had begun all the way back in Egypt. At one time, Israel and Judah had been one nation, formed by God in the crucible of captivity in Egypt. There, for 400 years, the descendants of Abraham had suffered under the oppressive hand of their Egyptian overlords, but they had also grown into a mighty nation. And during their four-century-long stay in the land of the Pharaohs, they had turned their backs on the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, embracing instead the gods of the Egyptians. So, idolatry was nothing new for them. It had been a problem from the very beginning.

“…when she left Egypt, she did not leave her spirit of prostitution behind. She was still as lewd as in her youth, when the Egyptians slept with her, fondled her breasts, and used her as a prostitute.” – Ezekiel 23:8 NLT

They brought their adulterous tendencies with them to the land of promise, continuing to give their affections to other gods. Even when Solomon, the son of King David, ascended to the throne of Israel, he promoted idolatry. Having disobeyed God by marrying many foreign wives, he soon found himself embracing their false gods and erecting shrines and worship centers all over the kingdom. It was for this reason that God split Solomon’s kingdom in half, creating Judah and Israel.

And after the division of the kingdom, the adultery continued virtually unabated. Eventually, God punished the northern kingdom, using the Assyrians to destroy the capital city of Samaria and subjugate the disobedient citizens of Israel.

“I handed her over to her Assyrian lovers, whom she desired so much. They stripped her, took away her children as their slaves, and then killed her. After she received her punishment, her reputation was known to every woman in the land.” – Ezekiel 23:9-10 NLT

Yet, the fall of Judah did nothing to change the behavior of the southern kingdom of Israel. Having watched their northern “sister” suffer humiliation and annihilation at the hands of their enemies, they stubbornly continued to pursue the same adulterous path.

“Yet even though Oholibah saw what had happened to Oholah, her sister, she followed right in her footsteps. And she was even more depraved, abandoning herself to her lust and prostitution.” – Ezekiel 23:11 NLT

Rather than learn a valuable lesson from the fall of Judah, the southern kingdom upped the ante and escalated their idolatrous ways. And God uses extremely graphic language to describe just how wicked Judah became.

“…she turned to even greater prostitution, remembering her youth when she was a prostitute in Egypt. She lusted after lovers with genitals as large as a donkey’s and emissions like those of a horse.” – Ezekiel 23:19-20 NLT

To understand just how disturbing this message must have been for Ezekiel to deliver and for his audience to receive, imagine going to church one Sunday morning and hearing your pastor present a message that contained some of the same imagery and language that Ezekiel used. Just think how you would feel if he accused you of spiritual prostitution and used the same graphic details to describe your spiritual indiscretions. You would be shocked, appalled, and probably offended. So were the people of Judah. And that is exactly what God intended. He wanted to shock them. He wanted to offend them. And He wanted them to be appalled at the gravity of their guilt. So He used extremely graphic language to describe just how serious their sin was.

Sometimes we can become overly comfortable with our sin that we view it with a kind of casualness. We get so used to it that we forget just how detestable it is to God. That was Judah's problem. They had sinned for so long that it no longer bothered them. They had learned to live with it and excuse it. They become accustomed to justifying their behavior. But God made it graphicly clear that this was anything but normal. Like two sisters who blatantly prostituted themselves with other men, Israel and Judah pursued relationships with other nations and other gods. They turned their backs on God and sought satisfaction elsewhere. They looked to other nations for their security. They turned to other gods for hope and healing. And while we might consider those actions less-than-shocking, God makes it clear that He viewed their actions as nothing short of immoral and unthinkable. Like a woman who walks out on her loving husband and gives herself physically to every man she meets, Israel and Judah had prostituted themselves time and time again – right in front of the very God who had chosen them, rescued them, and blessed them with His Law, His Temple, and His presence.

This chapter should disturb us and wake us up to the reality of the seriousness of sin. It should shock us and make us understand just how serious spiritual adultery is to God. He doesn't take it lightly. He won't tolerate it among His people. He would not and could not turn a blind eye to the actions of Judah or Israel. Spiritual unfaithfulness was and still is an offense to a holy God. If it bothered Him this much, back in the day of Ezekiel, it must still bother Him today. He is warning us to consider the seriousness of unfaithfulness and spiritual infidelity in the life of the child of God.

English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Trials, Troubles, and Trust

9 Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, 10 and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away. 11 For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits.

12 Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. 13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. 14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. – James 1:9-18 ESV

So often, we judge the success of our lives based on the circumstantial evidence that surrounds us. If our lives are free from trouble and trials, then we assume that God is pleased with us. But should any kind of difficulty come our way, we jump to the opposite conclusion and assume that God is punishing us for something we have done or something we have failed to do.

But James has been encouraging us to see life through a different lens. We must learn to view our circumstances with the clarifying help of God’s wisdom. And James gives a few examples of what this looks like in real life. First, “the believer of humble means should take pride in his high position” (James 1:9 NLT). Notice who the referent is in this verse. It is a believer who just happens to be poor. But James declares that this individual actually enjoys a “high position” or standing because of his relationship with Jesus Christ. He is a child of God and an heir to the Kingdom of God. His lack of social standing is inconsequential when compared with his status as a royal subject of heaven.

In James’ day, the average person believed that poverty was a curse from God. To be poor was considered a sign of God’s displeasure and discipline. Wealth was considered a sign of blessing. If you were rich, you must have done something to please God and warrant His outpouring of physical blessings. But James puts that fallacy to rest by stating, “the rich person’s pride should be in his humiliation, because he will pass away like a wildflower in the meadow” (James 1:10 NLT).

In other words, the person of means should always maintain a healthy does of humility by remembering that his wealth is temporary. As the old saying goes, you can’t take it with you. At death, his 15 minutes of fame will come to an abrupt and unavoidable end. And James provides a very eloquent description of this inevitable outcome that every wealthy individual faces.   

For the sun rises with its heat and dries up the meadow; the petal of the flower falls off and its beauty is lost forever. So also the rich person in the midst of his pursuits will wither away. – James 1:11 NLT

This thought brings James back to his original charge: “consider it nothing but joy when you fall into all sorts of trials” (James 1:2 NLT). But now he adds a further point of clarification that encompasses the fate of every believer, whether they are poor or wealthy.

Happy is the one who endures testing, because when he has proven to be genuine, he will receive the crown of life that God promised to those who love him. – James 1:12 NLT

It all goes back to the issue of the trials that God uses to test the spiritual condition of our lives. Trials are not punishments, but they serve as divine purifying agents that help to burn away the dross of sin that contaminates our lives. They help to purify and prepare God’s children for the future reward that awaits them: the crown of life that He has promised. Temporal wealth is not a sign of God’s blessing. Poverty is not evidence of His displeasure. And the presence of trials in the life of a believer is not an indication of God’s divine discipline. They should be viewed as instruments in the hands of a holy God who is lovingly purging the impurities and imperfections from the lives of those He loves. That is what led the apostle Paul to encourage the Corinthians to maintain a long-term, future-focused perspective regarding their present sufferings.

That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever. – 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 NLT

The apostle Peter shared Paul’s perspective and echoed his call for humility and faith in the midst of present difficulties.

So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor. Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.

Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith. Remember that your family of believers all over the world is going through the same kind of suffering you are.

In his kindness God called you to share in his eternal glory by means of Christ Jesus. So after you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation. – 1 Peter 5:6-10 NLT

Notice that both of these men stress the future glory that awaits the children of God. That is where we should set our sights and focus our attention. The promises of God concerning our eternal heritage are intended to instill hope and produce endurance. The trials of this present age have a shelf life. They will come to an end. And we are to set our hopes on the glorious future that God has planned for us.

But James warns against confusing the tests that God brings into our lives with temptations. He has made it clear that trials are tests. They are intended to expose sin and lead to confession, purification, and further sanctification. But for some, the presence of an unwanted trial can result in sin rather than sanctification. We can become angry and lash out. We can allow the trial to produce envy, lust, and resentment. We may even find ourselves shaking our fists in the face of God and refusing to respond in repentance. Instead, we allow the trial to produce further sin and then blame God for our actions.

Yet James will not give us that out.

Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself tempts no one. – James 1:13 NLT

Trials are tests but not temptations. God would never encourage one of His children to sin.  Yet, the temptation to do so is always there. The Old Testament story of Job is a perfect example of a test that could have easily become a temptation. God had allowed Satan to test the righteousness of Job by inflicting him with a debilitating skin disease.

Satan left the LORD’s presence, and he struck Job with terrible boils from head to foot.

Job scraped his skin with a piece of broken pottery as he sat among the ashes. – Job 2:7-8 NLT

In the midst of suffering from this horrible condition, Job’s wife confronted him with far-from-comforting words.

His wife said to him, “Are you still trying to maintain your integrity? Curse God and die.” – Job 2:9 NLT

At that point, Job faced a temptation. He could have listened to the counsel of his wife and blamed God for his unpleasant circumstances. But instead, he called out his wife for her foolish advice and declared his commitment to trust the will of God.

But Job replied, “You talk like a foolish woman. Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?” So in all this, Job said nothing wrong. – Job 2:10 NLT

For Job, the source of his temptation was not God but his own wife. It was an external source. But James states that, more often than not, the temptation is an inside job.

…each one is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desires. – James 1:14 NLT

It starts in the heart. Had Job not been a righteous man who had a love for God, he could have easily bought into his wife’s errant advice and lashed out at God for his devastating circumstances. Had his heart not been in the right place, Job could have made the wrong decision. And James points out the inevitable outcome of an impure heart that gives in to ungodly desires.

…when desire conceives, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is full grown, it gives birth to death. – James 1:15 NLT

We can’t blame God for our poor choices because, according to James, He is the giver of good gifts. 

All generous giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or the slightest hint of change. – James 1:17 NLT

God may test, but He never tempts. He doesn’t cause us to sin. What He does is give us the capacity to respond to the tests of life with faith that allows us to experience His life-transforming power that eventually leaves us “perfect and complete, not deficient in anything” (James 1:4 NLT).

God is not fickle or capricious. He doesn’t tease or tempt His children. But He does lovingly discipline them so that they might experience the full force of His sanctifying power in their lives. God is consistent and unchanging. His character doesn’t fluctuate and His sovereign plan for us remains unwavering and reliable.

By his sovereign plan he gave us birth through the message of truth, that we would be a kind of firstfruits of all he created. – James 1: 18 NLT

God preordained our salvation and He has planned out every aspect of our sanctification and future glorification. And no amount of trials can prevent God from completing what He has begun. This glorious promise is what prompted the apostle Paul to write:

…we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it. But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently). – Romans 8:23-25 NLT

English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Imitate God

1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

3 But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. 4 Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. 5 For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. – Ephesians 5:1-5 ESV

Imitate God. At this point in his letter, Paul issues a lofty and seemingly impossible call to action. And yet, that’s been the theme he has been expressing from the very beginning.  what Paul has been suggesting throughout his letter. In the opening lines of chapter one, Paul reminded his readers that God had chosen them “before the foundation of the world” so that they might “be holy and blameless before him” (Ephesians 1:4 ESV). In other words, that they might by holy as He is holy. He prayed that their hearts would be enlightened, so that they might “know what is the hope to which he has called you” (Ephesians 1:18 ESV). Paul wanted them to understand that God had a future in store for them that included their glorification. The day was coming when they would be sin-free and fully righteous. And he assured them of the security of that future by declaring, “God, being rich in mercy…made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:4, 5-6 ESV). 

There had been a time when they had been “without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12 ESV). But now they had been “brought near by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:13 ESV). They were sons and daughters of God and, as such, they were to emulate and imitate their Heavenly Father. That is why Paul so strongly stressed their new relationship with God.

…you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God… – Ephesians 2:19 ESV

As members of the body of Christ, they were being “being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:22 ESV). It was through the mystery of the church that “the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 3:10 ESV). And Paul’s prayer was that they would understand “how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is” (Ephesians 3:18 NLT) and “be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God” (Ephesians 3:19 NLT).

Paul had commanded the Ephesians: “let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy.” (Ephesians 4:23-24 NLT). According to Paul, God had identified the Ephesian believers as His own by placing His Spirit within them (Ephesians 4:30). So, they were to conduct their lives in such a way that they accurately reflected their status as God’s children.  And the greatest expression of their new divine nature was a life marked by Christ-like love.

 Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. – Ephesians 5:2 NLT

Jesus had imitated His Father. In fact, Paul described Jesus as “the visible image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15 NLT). In his second letter to the church in Corinth, Paul described Jesus as “the exact likeness of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4 NLT). And yet, thought Jesus was fully God, He “did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being” (Philippians 2:6-7 NLT). In doing so, Jesus displayed His godly character. He obeyed the will of His Father by displaying the selfless, sacrificial love of His Father.

He loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God. – Ephesians 5:3 NLT

Jesus always did exactly what His Father commanded Him to do. He gained strength from doing His Father’s will. That’s why He told His disciples, “My nourishment comes from doing the will of God, who sent me, and from finishing his work” (John 4:34 NLT). He told the Pharisees, “I carry out the will of the one who sent me, not my own will” (John 5:30 NLT). He declared that He had come down from heaven to do the will of the One who had sent him (John 6:38). In His humanity, Jesus perfectly modeled what it means to imitate God.

“I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does.” – John 5:19 ESV

God loved the world so much that He gave His only Son as the sacrifice for the sins of mankind (John 3:16). And Jesus laid down His life willingly, not under coercion.

“The Father loves me because I sacrifice my life so I may take it back again. No one can take my life from me. I sacrifice it voluntarily. For I have the authority to lay it down when I want to and also to take it up again. For this is what my Father has commanded.” – John 10:17-18 NLT

He was the visible, tangible expression of God’s love. He imitated God by loving as God loved. And Paul calls the Ephesians to “Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ” (Ephesians 5:2 NLT). In a sense, Paul is stating that Christ-likeness equals godliness. To be like the Son is to be like the Father. To imitate Christ is to imitate God, because they are one.

But Paul wants his readers to know what imitating God looks like in everyday life, and he does so by listing those characteristics that display ungodliness.

Let there be no sexual immorality, impurity, or greed among you. Such sins have no place among God’s people. Obscene stories, foolish talk, and coarse jokes—these are not for you. – Ephesians 5:3-4 NLT

People who display these kinds of qualities don’t look like God. Immorality, impurity, and greed are signs of godlessness, not godliness. They mark the lives of the unrepentant and unredeemed. They are diametrically opposed to a life of selfless, sacrificial love. Immorality involves lust – the desire to satisfy and fulfill selfish passions at the expense of others. Impurity has to do with moral and physical uncleanness. It describes the lives of the unsaved Gentiles.

Their minds are full of darkness; they wander far from the life God gives because they have closed their minds and hardened their hearts against him. They have no sense of shame. They live for lustful pleasure and eagerly practice every kind of impurity. – Ephesians 4:18-19 NLT

And greed or covetousness is an insatiable desire for that which has been forbidden by God. In the end, it is a worship of self, which is why, in verse 5, Paul ties covetousness closely to idolatry. To covet another man’s wife is to believe that you deserve what belongs to another. Your passions and preferences take priority over the needs and desires of others. But Paul boldly and unapologetically states that “everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God” (Ephesians 5:5 ESV). Those whose lives are marked by selfishness and self-indulgence were never really redeemed by God. They fail to display the divine nature that Jesus died to make possible. And their unrepentant behavior provides proof that they are unredeemed and still living as enemies of God. And this was not the first time Paul issued this warning against the unrighteous. He wrote the very same thing in his first letter to the church in Corinth.

Don’t you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don’t fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people—none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God. Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. – 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 NLT

And he repeated the same warning to the church in Galatia.

When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God. – Galatians 5:19-21 NLT

Paul is not threatening Christians with the loss of their salvation. He is simply emphasizing the expectation of spiritual transformation in the life of a believer. The indwelling presence of the Spirit of God will produce tangible evidence of a salvation in the form of increasing sanctification or Christ-likeness. The true believer will experience a supernatural transformation of life that shows up actions and attitudes. Their lives will model the character of Christ and, in doing so, will imitate their Heavenly Father.

English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

New English Translation (NET)NET Bible® copyright ©1996-2017 by Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. http://netbible.com All rights reserved.

The Lord Was With Him

1 Now Joseph had been brought down to Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, had bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him down there. 2 The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, and he was in the house of his Egyptian master. 3 His master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord caused all that he did to succeed in his hands. 4 So Joseph found favor in his sight and attended him, and he made him overseer of his house and put him in charge of all that he had. 5 From the time that he made him overseer in his house and over all that he had, the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake; the blessing of the Lord was on all that he had, in house and field. 6 So he left all that he had in Joseph’s charge, and because of him he had no concern about anything but the food he ate.

Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance. 7 And after a time his master’s wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, “Lie with me.” 8 But he refused and said to his master’s wife, “Behold, because of me my master has no concern about anything in the house, and he has put everything that he has in my charge. 9 He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except you, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” 10 And as she spoke to Joseph day after day, he would not listen to her, to lie beside her or to be with her.

11 But one day, when he went into the house to do his work and none of the men of the house was there in the house, 12 she caught him by his garment, saying, “Lie with me.” But he left his garment in her hand and fled and got out of the house. 13 And as soon as she saw that he had left his garment in her hand and had fled out of the house, 14 she called to the men of her household and said to them, “See, he has brought among us a Hebrew to laugh at us. He came in to me to lie with me, and I cried out with a loud voice. 15 And as soon as he heard that I lifted up my voice and cried out, he left his garment beside me and fled and got out of the house.” 16 Then she laid up his garment by her until his master came home, 17 and she told him the same story, saying, “The Hebrew servant, whom you have brought among us, came in to me to laugh at me. 18 But as soon as I lifted up my voice and cried, he left his garment beside me and fled out of the house.” – Genesis 39:1-18 ESV

While Judah was busy dealing with his own set of problems, his younger brother was hundreds of miles away, attempting to acclimate to his new role as a slave.  The Ishmaelite traders to whom Judah and his brothers had sold Joseph, had eventually cashed in by selling him to an Egyptian named Potiphar, the captain Pharaoh’s guard. The once-favored son of Jacob was now a household slave to one of the most powerful men in the land of Egypt. His circumstances had taken a dramatic turn for the worst and, yet, Moses indicates that God was with him.

The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, and he was in the house of his Egyptian master. – Genesis 39:2 ESV

This statement almost sounds self-contradictory. How in the world could Joseph be described as a slave and a success at the same time? Those two conditions seem to be mutually exclusive. And how could Moses declare that God was with Joseph when all the conditions surrounding his life seem to indicate that God had actually abandoned Joseph? From a purely human perspective it would appear that Joseph’s life was in a downward spiral. He had traded in his expensive robe for the garments of a common slave. No longer would he enjoy the perks that came with being the apple of his father’s eye. This rather spoiled young man would no longer have servants to meet his every need, but instead, he would find himself relegated to the lowly status of a household slave to an Egyptian master.

But despite his seeming fall from grace, God was with him. Not only that, God favored him. Even in the midst of Joseph’s less-than-ideal conditions, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was watching over him. In fact, Moses accentuates this point three additional times in the chapter.

…the Lord was with him and that the Lord caused all that he did to succeed in his hands… – Genesis 39:3 ESV

…the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. – Genesis 39:21 ESV

…the Lord was with him. And whatever he did, the Lord made it succeed. – Genesis 39:23 ESV

Joseph had only been 17-years-old when his brothers sold him as a slave. So, by the time this story took place, he may have been in his early 20s. He was far from home and living in a strange land where he was unfamiliar with the customs and unable to speak their language. But over time, Joseph became increasingly more acculturated to his new environment, eventually learning to speak their native tongue and perform his duties with both confidence and excellence. And his acclimation didn’t go unnoticed or unrewarded by Potiphar.

…he soon made Joseph his personal attendant. He put him in charge of his entire household and everything he owned. From the day Joseph was put in charge of his master’s household and property, the Lord began to bless Potiphar’s household for Joseph’s sake. – Genesis 39:4-5 NLT

Potiphar could sense that Joseph enjoyed the blessings of his God. Purchasing this young Hebrew slave had turned out to be a windfall for Potiphar. It seems that everything Joseph touched turned to gold. And, eventually, Potiphar made Joseph his personal attendant, giving him responsibility over his entire household and land holdings. To Potiphar, Joseph turned out to be a great investment. He was like some kind of lucky charm or talisman that brought him good fortune and great reward. And it was all the work of God.

Eventually, Potiphar put all his fiscal and household affairs under the direct supervision of this young Hebrew slave and, because Joseph was blessed by God, Pharaoh enjoyed a great return on his investment. According to Moses, Joseph was so effective and reliable, that the most difficult decision Potiphar faced each day was deciding what to eat.

But this is where the story takes a decidedly dark turn. Though having been betrayed by his own brothers, this handsome and highly gifted young man was enjoying great success. The trajectory of his life had begun to trend upward, which must have provided much-needed encouragement to Joseph at this dark and lonely period of his life. Once again, he was enjoying the favor of God as expressed through the actions of a father-like figure in his life. Potiphar had bestowed on this young Hebrew slave great responsibilities that were evidence of his great respect for Joseph’s integrity and ingenuity.

But Potiphar wasn’t the only one who had taken an interest in Joseph. The Egyptian captain’s wife was also attracted to Joseph, but not for his management skills. Moses points out that Joseph was “a very handsome and well-built young man” (Genesis 39:6 NLT). And this fact had not escaped Potiphar’s wife. For as long as Joseph had been in their home, she had begun to see him as far more than a servant. In her eyes, Joseph had become an object of lust and desire. And it wasn’t long until her lust became so intense and insatiable that she propositioned the unsuspecting Joseph. But out of respect for his master and reverence for God, Joseph refused her advances.

“…my master trusts me with everything in his entire household. No one here has more authority than I do. He has held back nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How could I do such a wicked thing? It would be a great sin against God.” – Genesis 39:8-9 NLT

As the old saying goes, Joseph was between a rock and a hard place. By denying his master’s wife, he was risking her wrath. But if he gave in, he would be violating his master’s trust and, worse yet, he would be guilty of offending the righteous will of a holy God. And Joseph knew that his recent stretch of good fortune had actually been the work of his good and gracious God.

But Potiphar’s wife proved to be persistent because her lust was exigent. She was not going to give up easily.

She kept putting pressure on Joseph day after day, but he refused to sleep with her, and he kept out of her way as much as possible. – Genesis 39:10 NLT

Poor Joseph was left with no other alternative but to avoid all contact with the woman. But that proved to be difficult, if not impossible. Unfortunately, the day came when Joseph found himself all alone in the house with her. It seems likely that this unlikely state of affairs had been arranged in advance by Potiphar’s wife. No longer able to control her lustful thoughts, she orchestrated the perfect scenario to see them fulfilled.

She came and grabbed him by his cloak, demanding, “Come on, sleep with me!” Joseph tore himself away, but he left his cloak in her hand as he ran from the house. – Genesis 39:12 NLT

Joseph ran for his life. In doing so, he illustrated the point made by the apostle Paul centuries later.

Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. – 1 Corinthians 6:18 NLT

But while Joseph had escaped the grasp of Potiphar’s wife, he had not escaped the anger fueled by her damaged ego. She was livid that this common slave had dared to spurn her sexual advances, and she decided to make him pay for it. This vindictive woman crafted a sordid tale of attempted rape and painted herself as the innocent victim of Joseph’s unwanted advances.

And it is at this point that the reader must wrestle with the question: But where was God in all this? It is difficult to read this story and not question why God did not step in and protect Joseph. It is clear that, by running away, Joseph did the right thing. He took the proper path and honored his master and his God. But why did God allow this woman to put Joseph in this compromising and potentially catastrophic situation? Could He not have prevented it? Why did faithful Joseph have to endure yet another case of undeserved and premeditated vengeance? He had done nothing to deserve being sold into slavery. And now, he had done nothing to deserve being falsely accused of rape. But it is important to remember what Moses point out four different times in this chapter. 

The Lord was with Joseph… – Genesis 39:2 ESV

While Joseph’s circumstances were about to dramatically change, his relationship with God remained the same. The Lord had not abandoned him. The Almighty was still with him. And God’s plans, while taking a slightly unexpected path, remained unchanged.

English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

New English Translation (NET)NET Bible® copyright ©1996-2017 by Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. http://netbible.com All rights reserved.

Wise But Disobedient

9 And the Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice 10 and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods. But he did not keep what the Lord commanded. 11 Therefore the Lord said to Solomon, “Since this has been your practice and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant. 12 Yet for the sake of David your father I will not do it in your days, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son. 13 However, I will not tear away all the kingdom, but I will give one tribe to your son, for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem that I have chosen.”

14 And the Lord raised up an adversary against Solomon, Hadad the Edomite. He was of the royal house in Edom. 15 For when David was in Edom, and Joab the commander of the army went up to bury the slain, he struck down every male in Edom 16 (for Joab and all Israel remained there six months, until he had cut off every male in Edom). 17 But Hadad fled to Egypt, together with certain Edomites of his father’s servants, Hadad still being a little child. 18 They set out from Midian and came to Paran and took men with them from Paran and came to Egypt, to Pharaoh king of Egypt, who gave him a house and assigned him an allowance of food and gave him land. 19 And Hadad found great favor in the sight of Pharaoh, so that he gave him in marriage the sister of his own wife, the sister of Tahpenes the queen. 20 And the sister of Tahpenes bore him Genubath his son, whom Tahpenes weaned in Pharaoh’s house. And Genubath was in Pharaoh’s house among the sons of Pharaoh. 21 But when Hadad heard in Egypt that David slept with his fathers and that Joab the commander of the army was dead, Hadad said to Pharaoh, “Let me depart, that I may go to my own country.” 22 But Pharaoh said to him, “What have you lacked with me that you are now seeking to go to your own country?” And he said to him, “Only let me depart.”

23 God also raised up as an adversary to him, Rezon the son of Eliada, who had fled from his master Hadadezer king of Zobah. 24 And he gathered men about him and became leader of a marauding band, after the killing by David. And they went to Damascus and lived there and made him king in Damascus. 25 He was an adversary of Israel all the days of Solomon, doing harm as Hadad did. And he loathed Israel and reigned over Syria. – 1 Kings 11:9-25 ESV

Solomon’s name is derived from the Hebrew word, shalowm, which means “peace.” And Solomon had lived up to his name, delivering to his people an unprecedented time of peace and tranquility.

Solomon’s dominion extended over all the kingdoms west of the Euphrates River, from Tiphsah to Gaza. And there was peace on all his borders. During the lifetime of Solomon, all of Judah and Israel lived in peace and safety. – 1 Kings 4:24-25 NLT

While Solomon used his great wealth to purchase thousands of horses and chariots to equip his army, his investment proved unwise and unnecessary because there were no enemies to fight. He had managed to secure the peace through carefully negotiated treaties with the surrounding nations and through marital alliances with princesses from Moab, Ammon, Edom, Sidon, and from among the Hittites.

But those very same women ended up turning Solomon’s heart away from the Lord. By choosing to align himself with these women from pagan nations, Solomon had exposed himself to their false gods. And driven by his own lust for sensual pleasure, Solomon had compromised his convictions, disobeying the command of God.

“You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.” – 1 Kings 11:2 ESV

To say that Solomon was obsessed with women is not an exaggeration. He had managed to accumulate for himself 700 wives of royal birth, in direct violation of God’s word. And the text reveals that Solomon “clung to these in love” (1 Kings 11:2 ESV). The image conveyed in the Hebrew is that Solomon was clinging to these women, like a child with a toy he refuses to give up. And the Hebrew word for “love” in this passage is 'ahab, and in the context of this passage, it carries a somewhat negative connotation.  The author seems to be portraying Solomon as driven by lustful, sensual motives that blind him to the dangers of his actions. This man had the financial resources and the power to deny himself nothing his heart desired. He was like an addict with full access to his drug of choice. Solomon loved women and he had more than 700 of them to satisfy his seemingly insatiable sexual desires.

In an attempt to please his many wives, Solomon had constructed altars and shrines to their various gods. To do so would have cost Solomon a great deal of money. Just as he had invested his financial resources to build a temple to the one true God, now he was pouring money and human resources into the construction of worship sites dedicated to the false gods of his many wives. And the presence of these shrines became a source of temptation to the people of Israel, causing them to turn their backs on Yahweh.

God had promised to give Solomon wealth and fame. But now Solomon was using the financial blessings of God to promote the worship of false gods. And his actions would cost him dearly. God delivered a stinging rebuke to Solomon, informing him that his disobedience would have dire consequences.

“Since you have not kept my covenant and have disobeyed my decrees, I will surely tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your servants.” – 1 Kings 11:11 NLT

God had chosen Solomon to be the next king of Israel, following in the footsteps of his father David. But Solomon had “refused to follow the Lord completely, as his father, David, had done” (1 Kings 11:6 NLT). Unlike David, Solomon had failed to remain faithful to God. He had a divided allegiance, allowing his love for God to become diluted by his love of the world and his lust for sensual pleasures. So, God was going to bring judgment upon Solomon by dividing his kingdom in half. The vast empire that Solomon had spent so much time, energy, and money building, would be reduced to a fraction of its former glory. And, not only that, the peace that Israel had enjoyed would be disrupted by the arrival of “adversaries” – enemies sent by God to punish His disobedient king and people.

Out of His respect for David, God graciously allowed Solomon to complete his reign with his kingdom intact. It would be Solomon’s son who would have to suffer the consequences of his father’s sin. But, in the meantime, Solomon would have to endure the unpleasant prospect of war. The text clearly states that “the Lord raised up Hadad the Edomite, a member of Edom’s royal family, to be Solomon’s adversary” (1 Kings 11:14 NLT). This was a sovereign act of God. Hadad had been chosen by God to be an instrument of His judgment against Solomon.

Hadad was a member of the Edomite royal family, who had been living in exile in Egypt ever since David’s forces had conquered and occupied their land.

So David became even more famous when he returned from destroying 18,000 Edomites in the Valley of Salt. He placed army garrisons throughout Edom, and all the Edomites became David’s subjects. In fact, the Lord made David victorious wherever he went. – 2 Samuel 8:13-14 NLT

In an attempt to explain Hadad’s animosity toward Solomon, the author reveals that “Hadad and a few of his father’s royal officials escaped and headed for Egypt” (1 Kings 11:17 NLT). Joab, the general over David’s armies, had remained in Edom with a contingent of troops, orchestrating a clean-up operation. They had spent six months methodically and systematically eradicating every last male among the Edomites.

Having fled to Egypt for refuge, Hadad found himself welcomed by Pharaoh with open arms. He was even allowed to marry the sister of the queen. This very brief history of Hadad’s time in Egypt mirrors that of Moses. The one who would become the eventual deliverer of Israel had been born in Egypt, during a perilous time when Pharaoh had ordered the deaths of all the male children of the Hebrews. But Moses had been miraculously delivered, ending up a member of Pharoah’s household. And this young man would eventually be used by God to rescue His people from their enslavement in Egypt. Yet, in Hadad’s case, he was an Edomite who had fled to Egypt for refuge and would be used by God, not to deliver the people of Israel, but to punish them. He would return to the land of promise to bring judgment, not blessing. He would deliver the punishment of God, not peace.

But he would not be alone in his role as God’s agent of judgment. God would also raise up Rezon son of Eliada. While Hadad represented the Edomites in the south, Rezon would rally the northern enemies of Israel. Essentially, God was creating a pincer movement designed to envelop the Israelites from two sides. Solomon was going to find himself surrounded by adversaries. And these two men would use their intense hatred for David and the people of Israel to fuel their ongoing and unrelenting harassment of Solomon.

Rezon was Israel’s bitter adversary for the rest of Solomon’s reign, and he made trouble, just as Hadad did. Rezon hated Israel intensely and continued to reign in Aram. – 1 Kings 11:25 NLT

Solomon’s “love” for his many wives had led him to disobey God. His unbridled lust had led him to make unwise decisions that resulted in ungodly behavior. And now, he was going to pay the consequences.

English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

More and More Part 2

9 Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, 10 for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, 11 and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, 12 so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. – 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12 ESV

It’s interesting to note how, in this passage, Paul contrasts love and lust. In verses 1-8, he points out the need for the Thessalonian believers to “abstain from sexual immorality” (1 Thessalonians 4:3 ESV). They were to refrain from practicing sexual sin or, as the word means in Greek, “to hold one's self off.” As believers, they had been given a new capacity to refrain from their old desires, driven by their sinful natures. Upon placing their faith in Christ, they had received the presence and power of the indwelling Holy Spirit. And, as a result, they were able to say no to lustful desires.

The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. – Galatians 5:17 NLT

The sinful nature lusts or desires the wrong things. And Paul pointed out to the Galatian believers that those who allowed their lives to be driven by the desires of their old nature, rather than the Spirit, would produce ungodly fruit in their lives. And the first three he mentions are tied to sexual sin. 

When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. – Galatians 5:19-21 NLT

And Paul has warned the Thessalonian church: “each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God” (1 Thessalonians 4:4-5 ESV). John Piper defines lust as “a sexual desire that dishonors its object and disregards God” (John Piper, Battling the Unbelief of Lust, www.desiringgod.org). And he expands on that definition by adding:

“Sexual desire in itself is good. God made it in the beginning. It has its proper place. But it was made to be governed or regulated or guided by two concerns: honor toward the other person and holiness toward God. Lust is what that sexual desire becomes when that honor and that holiness are missing from it.” – John Piper, Battling the Unbelief of Lust, www.desiringgod.org

Paul wanted the Thessalonians to understand that they had a new obligation to live their lives in such a way that everything they did brought glory and honor to God. With the Spirit’s help, they were to learn to control their bodies, not allowing their natural, God-given desires to become perverted or distorted by sin. Sexual desire is not a sin, but it is actually a gift from God. But like everything else in life since the fall, this godly gift can be stained by the presence of sin. Rather than being an expression of self-sacrificing love for another, it turns in on itself, demanding that someone satisfy our selfish desires for sexual pleasure. God gets left out of the picture. And love gets replaced by lust. That is why Paul points out that their lives were to be marked by holiness, not impurity. 

For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you. – 1 Thessalonians 4:7-8 ESV

And this was not a message Paul reserved for the Thessalonians. He shared the same warning to the believers in Rome.

Do not let sin control the way you live; do not give in to sinful desires. Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God. – Romans 6:12-13 NLT

Lust versus love. One dishonors the other person by using them for purely selfish reasons. And, in the end, this disobeys and dishonors God. But when we truly love as God has called us to love, sacrificially and selflessly, the other person is treated with value, dignity, and honor. And God receives glory. 

A Christian marriage is to be a proving ground of the Spirit’s life-transforming power, where the selfless, sacrificial love of Christ is modeled in everyday life. In his letter to the church in Ephesus, Paul wrote: “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21 NLT). Then he provided them with specific application of what that mutual submission would look life in the marriage context.

For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything.

For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. – Ephesians 5:22-26 NLT

While we find it easy to get hung up on Paul’s call for the wives to submit, it is essential to understand that he is calling both the husband and the wife to practice selfless submission – out of reverence to Christ. And earlier in the same chapter, Paul provided a call for the Ephesians to imitate God and to follow the example of Christ.

Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children. Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God. – Ephesians 5:1-2 NLT

And then he added a what-not-to-do element to his instructions.

Let there be no sexual immorality, impurity, or greed among you. Such sins have no place among God’s people. – Ephesians 5:3 NLT

Love, not lust. That is the call placed on the believer by God Himself, and the kind of love God had in mind was modeled by Christ. And this selfless love was not just reserved for marriage. It was to be displayed in all their relationships. God has called His children to love others in the same way He has shown love to them.

But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. – Romans 5:8 NLT

And He expects them to follow the example of Christ.

We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. – 1 John 3:16 NLT

And Paul reminds the Thessalonians that they don’t require any more instructions regarding the kind of love God has in mind “for God himself has taught you to love one another” (1 Thessalonians 4:9 NLT). And the apostle John lets us know just how God had taught them.

God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. – 1 John 4:9-11 NLT

Paul compliments the Thessalonian church for having displayed the very kind of love he was writing about. They had already given evidence of their selflessness and willingness to sacrifice on behalf of others. In his second letter to the church in Corinth, Paul bragged on the tangible expressions of love displayed by the Macedonian churches, including the fellowship in Thessalonica.

Now I want you to know, dear brothers and sisters, what God in his kindness has done through the churches in Macedonia. They are being tested by many troubles, and they are very poor. But they are also filled with abundant joy, which has overflowed in rich generosity.

For I can testify that they gave not only what they could afford, but far more. And they did it of their own free will. They begged us again and again for the privilege of sharing in the gift for the believers in Jerusalem. They even did more than we had hoped, for their first action was to give themselves to the Lord and to us, just as God wanted them to do. – 2 Corinthians 8:1-5 NLT

But Paul didn’t want them to rest on their laurels. In fact, he begged them “to do this more and more” (1 Thessalonians 4:10 ESV). They were to keep loving. They were to stop lusting. And then Paul adds three characteristics or marks of a life lived in love.

1. Their lives would exhibit peace and calm, rather than strife and turmoil. Paul told the Romans, “Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone” (Romans 12:18 NLT). Peaceful lives create an atmosphere in which others feel safe and secure. And that is an expression of love.

2. They were to tend to their own affairs, refusing to meddle in the concerns of others. This is not a call to disregard the needs or life circumstances of others, but it is simply an extension of Jesus’ admonition to “get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye” (Matthew 7:5 NLT).

3. They were to be diligent workers, using whatever skills they had to provide for themselves, and refusing to become a burden to others. There was no place for laziness or a spirit of entitlement in their lives.

And Paul had a purpose behind his call for selfless, sacrificial living.

Then people who are not believers will respect the way you live, and you will not need to depend on others. – 1 Thessalonians 4:12 NLT

At the end of the day, Paul was interested in seeing the Thessalonian believers live out their faith in tangible ways that exhibited the power of the Spirit and gave proof of their status as God’s children.

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

A Serious Heart Condition

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.” – Matthew 5:27-30 ESV

Notice what Jesus says here. “Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” For the average Jew, God’s prohibition against adultery was only referring to the physical act itself. And while the Mosaic Law clearly commanded, “You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14 ESV), Jesus informs them that God had far more in mind than they perceived. The issue was the heart.

In the Old Testament, God accused the people of Israel of spiritual adultery time and time again. And not just when they were actually worshiping other gods. They could be unfaithful and adulterous, even in the midst of their worship of Him. Consider this stinging criticism He leveled against them:

"These people say they are mine. They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. And their worship of me is nothing but man-made rules learned by rote.” – Isaiah 29:13 NLT

They had a heart problem, and so did the people listening to Jesus’ sermon on the hillside. They just didn’t know it. They were stuck on the externals, the outward meaning of the law, and their physical adherence to it. As long as they restrained themselves from actually committing the act of adultery, they were good with God, or so they thought.

Jesus uses the Greek word, “lust” (epithymeō), which means “to set the heart upon.” The word could be positive or negative in its meaning. It all depended upon the context in which it was used. But if you set your heart upon another person’s spouse, lust was most definitely wrong. In its negative usage, lust was to strongly seek that which had been forbidden by God. So, what Jesus is really telling His audience is that it’s all about their purity of heart, not the physical act of adultery itself. In other words, it’s all about the motivation that leads up to the act. What would cause someone to set their heart upon something God had forbidden or placed off-limits? And this was not a new concept. Jesus was not introducing something radical here, but simply reminding His listeners of what the Scriptures had always taught about the heart.

Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. – Proverbs 4:23 NLT

The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? – Jeremiah 17:9 NLT

To refrain from committing adultery was not enough. Just because someone has the fortitude to keep themselves from having sex with their best friend’s wife, doesn’t mean they don’t want to and haven’t obsessed about it regularly. That seems to be Jesus’ point here. You can brag all you want to about your commitment to God’s law, and you may impress your friends with your piety, but you won’t fool God. Because He knows your heart. He knows your every thought. God isn’t just interested in outward compliance to His law, He wants a wholehearted commitment to Him and His will regarding righteous behavior.

And Jesus gives a shockingly graphic prescription for handling the problem of lust.

“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.” – Matthew 5:29 ESV

That sounds a bit extreme, doesn’t it? Is Jesus really recommending that we pluck out our eyes to keep from lusting? But wait, He’s not done.

“And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.” – Matthew 5:30 ESV

Would cutting off of your hand keep you from sinning? Probably not. And that is not what Jesus is teaching here. He is clearly using hyperbole, the use of over-exaggeration to drive home a point. So, what is His point? To understand what Jesus is saying, it might help to use a real-life event as an illustration. Early on in King David’s reign, we are told that a time came “when kings go out to battle” (2 Samuel 11:1 ESV). It was springtime in Israel, the time of year when nations did battle. But the passage tells us that, while Joab and the forces of Israel went to war, “David remained at Jerusalem.” He stayed behind. And then we’re told:

It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. – 2 Samuel 11:2 ESV

David had time on his hands. And notice what it says: “he saw.” David “saw” Bathsheba. The Hebrew word is ra'ah, and it means “to behold, enjoy, look upon.” In other words, he lusted. But his lust was wrong because this woman was not his wife. In fact, the story will reveal that she was the wife of one of David’s soldiers. But notice that, at this point in the story, all David had done was lust. He had looked and enjoyed. But that would prove to be inadequate for David.

So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. – 2 Samuel 11:4 ESV

David “took” Bathsheba. The Hebrew word is laqach, which means “to seize, to take, carry away.” He saw and he took. He used his eyes and his hands. He gazed longingly and wrongly on something that was not his, then he seized what he saw to satisfy his own desires. James makes it quite clear what was going on in David’s heart and life at that moment:

Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death. – James 1:14-15 NLT

David saw with his eyes and took with his hands. His lustful thoughts resulted in sinful actions. But it all began in his heart. D. A. Carson provides us with some helpful insight into what Jesus meant by plucking out our eye and cutting off our hand.

We are to deal drastically with sin. We must not pamper it, flirt with it, enjoy nibbling a little bit of it around the edges. We are to hate it, crush it, dig it out. – D. A. Carson, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount

Our greatest desire should be to live in conformity to the will of God. And anything that might prevent us from doing so should be seen as expendable. A big part of our problem is our inordinate love affair with the things of this world. We lust after, covet, desire, and long for the things the world offers. We seek satisfaction and significance from the things of this world. In essence, we commit adultery with the world in order to satisfy our lustful desires. We see and we take. But James gives us a second word of warning:

You adulterers! Don't you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. – James 4:$ NLT

And James wasn’t done.

Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world. Let there be tears for what you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor. – James 4:8-10 NLT

There it is again: Purify your hearts. Adultery is a heart issue. Lust is a heart issue. And impurity of heart is the real problem. That is why Jesus said earlier, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8 ESV). Purity of heart has to do with loving God by giving Him every area of your life. It is to “love the Lord your God will all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind” (Matthew 2:37 NLT). Purity of heart is not outward conformity to a set of rules, but integrity or wholeness of life. It is a wholehearted seeking after God that impacts all of life. If you are seeking after God, it will be hard to seek satisfaction and significance elsewhere. If you are busy lusting after God, you will find it difficult to lust after someone or something else. Purity of heart flows out and influences our hands and our eyes.

Remember what Jesus had to say to the Pharisees regarding their man-made laws and regulations:

“For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, all sexual immorality, theft, lying, and slander. These are what defile you. Eating with unwashed hands will never defile you.” – Matthew 15:19-20 NLT

External behavior is a byproduct of the inward condition of the heart. Adultery is a result of misplaced lust and desire. When we should be seeking all our satisfaction and significance from God, we end up committing adultery in our hearts, proving unfaithful to Him by turning our affections to something or someone other than Him. For Jesus, adherence to the letter of the law was not the point. It was the condition of the heart. He was coming to do radical heart surgery on the people of God. He was trying to get them to realize that their problem with God was not their inability to keep His laws, but their incapacity to love Him faithfully, which kept them from living for Him obediently. Until their hearts were renewed, their affections would remain misplaced. Jesus came to reveal to them just how much God loved them.

Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. – Romans 5:7-8 NLT

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

Love vs Lust.

27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.” – Matthew 5:27-30 ESV

Notice what Jesus says here. “Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” For the average Jew, God’s prohibition against adultery was only referring to the physical act itself. And while God had clearly commanded, “You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14 ESV), Jesus informs them that God had far more in mind with this law than they perceived. The issue was the heart. In the Old Testament, God accused the people of Israel of spiritual adultery time and time again. And not just when they were actually worshiping other gods. They could be unfaithful and adulterous even in the midst of their worship of Him. Listen to the strong words He had for them:

“These people say they are mine. They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. And their worship of me is nothing but man-made rules learned by rote.” – Isaiah 29:13 NLT

They had a heart problem, and so did the people in Jesus’ audience that day on the hillside. They just didn’t know it. They were stuck on the externals: the outward meaning of the law and their physical adherence to it. As long as they restrained themselves from actually committing the act of adultery, they were good with God, or so they thought. When Jesus refers to lust, He uses the Greek word epithymeō, which means “to set the heart upon.” The word itself was not positive or negative in its meaning. It all depended upon the context. And in the context of another person’s spouse, lust was wrong. It was to strongly seek what had been forbidden by God. So what Jesus is really telling His audience is that it’s all about their purity of heart, not the physical act of adultery itself. In other words, it’s all about the motivation that leads up to the act and that begins in the heart. This was not a new concept. Jesus was not introducing something radical here, but simply reminding His listeners of what the Bible had always said.

Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. – Proverbs 4:23 NLT

The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? – Jeremiah 17:9 NLT

To refrain from committing adultery was not enough. Just because someone has the fortitude to keep themselves from having sex with their best friend’s wife, doesn’t mean they don’t want to or haven’t obsessed about it regularly. That seems to be Jesus’ point here. You can brag all you want to about your commitment to God’s law, and you may impress your friends with your piety, but not God. Because He knows your heart. He knows your every thought. God isn’t just interested in outward compliance to His law, He wants a wholehearted commitment to Him and His will regarding righteous behavior.

And Jesus gives a shockingly graphic prescription for handling the problem of lust.

If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. – Matthew 5:29 ESV

That sounds a bit drastic doesn’t it? Is Jesus really recommending that we pluck out our eyes to keep from lusting? But wait, He’s not done.

And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. – Matthew 5:30 ESV

Would cutting off of your hand keep you from sinning? Probably not. And that is not what Jesus is teaching here. He is clearly using hyperbole, an over-exaggeration in order to drive home a point. So, what is His point? To understand what Jesus is saying, it might help to use a real-life scenario as an illustration. Early on in the reign of King David, we are told that a time came “when kings go out to battle” (2 Samuel 11:1 ESV). It was springtime in Israel, the time of year when warfare took place. But the passage tells us that while Joab and the forces of Israel went to war, “David remained at Jerusalem.” He stayed behind. And then we’re told:

It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. – 2 Samuel 11:2 ESV

David had time on his hands. And notice what it says: “he saw”. David “saw” Bathsheba. The Hebrew word is ra’ah, and it means “to behold, enjoy, look upon.” In other words, he lusted. But his lust was wrong, because this woman was not his wife. In fact, the story will reveal that she was the wife of one of David’s soldiers. But notice that, at this point in the story, all David had done was lust. He had looked and enjoyed. But that would prove to be inadequate for David.

So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. – 2 Samuel 11:4 ESV

David “took” Bathsheba. The Hebrew word is laqach, which means “to seize, to take, carry away.” He saw and he took. He used his eyes and his hands. He gazed longingly and wrongly on something that was not his, then he seized it in order to satisfy his own desires. James makes it quite clear what was going on in David’s heart and life at that moment:

Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death. – James 1:14-15 NLT

David saw with his eyes and took with his hands. His lustful thoughts resulted in sinful actions. But it all began in his heart. D. A. Carson provides us with some helpful insight into what Jesus meant by plucking out our eye and cutting off our hand.

We are to deal drastically with sin. We must not pamper it, flirt with it, enjoy nibbling a little bit of it around the edges. We are to hate it, crush it, dig it out. – D. A. Carson, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount

Our greatest desire should be to live in conformity to the will of God. And anything that would prevent us from doing so should be seen as expendable. A big part of our problem is our inordinate love affair with the things of this world. We lust after, covet, desire, and long for the things the world offers. We seek satisfaction and significance from the things of this world. In essence, we commit adultery with the world in order to satisfy our lustful desires. We see and we take. But James gives us a second word of warning:

You adulterers! Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. – James 4:$ NLT

And James wasn’t done.

Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world. Let there be tears for what you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor. – James 4:8-10 NLT

There it is again: Purify your hearts. Adultery is a heart issue. Lust is a heart issue. And impurity of heart is the real problem. That is why Jesus said earlier, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8 ESV). Purity of heart has to do with loving God by giving Him every area of your life. It is to “love the Lord your God will all your heart, all you soul, and all your mind” (Matthew 2:37 NLT). Purity of heart is not outward conformity to rules, but integrity or wholeness of life. It is a wholehearted seeking after God that impacts all of life. If you are seeking after God, it will be hard to seek satisfaction and significance elsewhere. If you are busy lusting after God, you will find it difficult to lust after someone or something else. Purity of heart flows out and influences our hands and our eyes.

Remember what Jesus had to say to the Pharisees regarding their man-made laws and regulations:

“For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, all sexual immorality, theft, lying, and slander. These are what defile you. Eating with unwashed hands will never defile you.” – Matthew 15:19-20 NLT

External behavior is a byproduct of the inward condition of the heart. Adultery is a result of misplaced lust and desire. When we should be seeking all our satisfaction and significance from God, we end up committing adultery in our hearts, proving unfaithful to Him and turning our affections to something or someone other than Him. For Jesus, adherence to the letter of the law was not the point. It was the condition of the heart. He was coming to do radical heart surgery on the people of God. He was trying to get them to realize that their problem with God was not their inability to keep His laws, but their incapacity to love Him faithfully, which kept them from living for Him obediently. Until their hearts were renewed their affections would remain misplaced. But their capacity to love God rather than lust after everything but God, would only be possible because of God’s love for them. God had sent His Son, Jesus, to die in their place as the payment for their sins. And the apostle Paul reminds us of the true extent of God’s matchless love.

Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. – Romans 5:7-8 NLT

Love was to replace lust. But their ability to love as God demanded would only be made possible by God’s love for them as expressed in the death of His Son on the cross. As the apostle John put it, “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19 ESV). Jesus was describing life in His Kingdom, a radical new way of living and loving that would not be based on law-keeping, but on the heart-transforming, life-reforming love of God.

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

Purity of Life.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.” – Matthew 5:27-30 ESV

Notice what Jesus says here. “Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” For the average Jew, God’s prohibition against adultery was only referring to the physical act itself. And while God had clearly commanded, “You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14 ESV), Jesus informs them that God had far more in mind with this law than they perceived. The issue was the heart. In the Old Testament, God accused the people of Israel of spiritual adultery time and time again. And not just when they were actually worshiping other gods. They could be unfaithful and adulterous even in the midst of their worship of Him. Listen to the strong words He had for them:

"These people say they are mine. They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. And their worship of me is nothing but man-made rules learned by rote.” – Isaiah 29:13 NLT

They had a heart problem, and so did the people in Jesus’ audience that day on the hillside. They just didn’t know it. They were stuck on the externals, the outward meaning of the law and their physical adherence to it. As long as they restrained themselves from actually committing the act of adultery, they were good with God, or so they thought. In the verse above, Jesus uses the Greek word, “lust” (epithymeō), which means “to set the heart upon”. The word itself was not positive or negative in its means. It all depended upon the context. And in the context of another person’s spouse, lust was wrong. It was to strongly seek what had been forbidden by God. So what Jesus is really telling His audience is that it’s all about their purity of heart, not the physical act of adultery itself. In other words, it’s all about the motivation that leads up to the act. It’s about the heart. And this was not a new concept. Jesus was not introducing something radical here, but simply reminding His listeners of what the Bible had always said.

Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. – Proverbs 4:23 NLT

The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? – Jeremiah 17:9 NLT

To refrain from committing adultery was not enough. Just because someone has the fortitude to keep themselves from having sex with their best friend’s wife, doesn’t mean they don’t want to and haven’t obsessed about it regularly. That seems to be Jesus’ point here. You can brag all you want to about your commitment to God’s law, and you may impress your friends with your piety, but not God. Because He knows your heart. He knows your every thought. God isn’t just interested in outward compliance to His law, He wants a wholehearted commitment to Him and His will regarding righteous behavior.

And Jesus gives a shockingly graphic prescription for handling the problem of lust.

If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. – Matthew 5:29 ESV

That sounds a bit drastic doesn’t it? Is Jesus really recommending that we pluck out our eyes to keep from lusting? But wait, He’s not done.

And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. – Matthew 5:30 ESV

Would cutting off of your hand keep you from sinning? Probably not. And that is not what Jesus is teaching here. He is clearly using hyperbole, an over-exaggeration in order to drive home a point. So, what is His point? To understand what Jesus is saying, it might help to use a real-life event as an illustration. Early on, in the reign of King David, we are told that a time came “when kings go out to battle” (2 Samuel 11:1 ESV). It was springtime in Israel, the time of year when warfare took place. But the passage tells us that, while Joab and the forces of Israel went to war, “David remained at Jerusalem.” He stayed behind. And then we’re told:

It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. – 2 Samuel 11:2 ESV

David had time on his hands. And notice what it says: “he saw”. David “saw” Bathsheba. The Hebrew word is ra'ah, and it means “to behold, enjoy, look upon”. In other words, he lusted. But his lust was wrong, because this woman was not his wife. In fact, the story will reveal that she was the wife of one of David’s soldiers. But notice that, at this point in the story, all David had done was lust. He had looked and enjoyed. But that would prove to be inadequate for David.

So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. – 2 Samuel 11:4 ESV

David “took” Bathsheba. The Hebrew word is laqach, which means “to seize, to take, carry away”. He saw and he took. He used his eyes and his hands. He gazed longingly and wrongly on something that was not his, then he seized her to satisfy his own desires. James makes it quite clear what was going on in David’s heart and life at that moment:

Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death. – James 1:14-15 NLT

David saw with his eyes and took with his hands. His lustful thoughts resulted in sinful actions. But it all began in his heart. D. A. Carson provides us with some helpful insight into what Jesus meant by plucking out our eye and cutting off our hand.

We are to deal drastically with sin. We must not pamper it, flirt with it, enjoy nibbling a little bit of it around the edges. We are to hate it, crush it, dig it out. – D. A. Carson, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount

Our greatest desire should be to live in conformity to the will of God. And anything that would prevent us from doing so should be seen as expendable. A big part of our problem is our inordinate love affair with the things of this world. We lust after, covet, desire, and long for the things the world offers. We seek satisfaction and significance from the things of this world. In essence, we commit adultery with the world in order to satisfy our lustful desires. We see and we take. But James gives us a second word of warning:

You adulterers! Don't you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. – James 4:$ NLT

And James wasn’t done.

Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world. Let there be tears for what you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor. – James 4:8-10 NLT

There it is again: Purify your hearts. Adultery is a heart issue. Lust is a heart issue. And impurity of heart is the real problem. That is why Jesus said earlier, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8 ESV). Purity of heart has to do with loving God by giving Him every area of your life. It is to “love the Lord your God will all your heart, all you soul, and all your mind” (Matthew 2:37 NLT). Purity of heart is not outward conformity to rules, but integrity or wholeness of life. It is a wholehearted seeking after God that impacts all of life. If you are seeking after God, it will be hard to seek satisfaction and significance elsewhere. If you are busy lusting after God, you will find it difficult to lust after someone or something else. Purity of heart flows out and influences our hands and our eyes.

Remember what Jesus had to say to the Pharisees regarding their man-made laws and regulations:

“For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, all sexual immorality, theft, lying, and slander. These are what defile you. Eating with unwashed hands will never defile you.” – Matthew 15:19-20 NLT

External behavior is a byproduct of the inward condition of the heart. Adultery is a result of misplaced lust and desire. When we should be seeking all our satisfaction and significance from God, we end up committing adultery in our hearts, proving unfaithful to Him and turning our affections to something or someone other than Him. For Jesus, adherence to the letter of the law was not the point. It was the condition of the heart. He was coming to do radical heart surgery on the people of God. He was trying to get them to realize that their problem with God was not their inability to keep His laws, but their incapacity to love Him faithfully, which kept them from living for Him obediently. Until their hearts were renewed their affections would remain misplaced. Jesus came to reveal to them just how much God loved them.

Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. – Romans 5:7-8 NLT

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

When Our Sins Come Home.

Now Absalom, David's son, had a beautiful sister, whose name was Tamar. And after a time Amnon, David’s son, loved her. And Amnon was so tormented that he made himself ill because of his sister Tamar, for she was a virgin, and it seemed impossible to Amnon to do anything to her. But Amnon had a friend, whose name was Jonadab, the son of Shimeah, David’s brother. And Jonadab was a very crafty man. And he said to him, “O son of the king, why are you so haggard morning after morning? Will you not tell me?” Amnon said to him, “I love Tamar, my brother Absalom’s sister.” Jonadab said to him, “Lie down on your bed and pretend to be ill. And when your father comes to see you, say to him, ‘Let my sister Tamar come and give me bread to eat, and prepare the food in my sight, that I may see it and eat it from her hand.’” So Amnon lay down and pretended to be ill. And when the king came to see him, Amnon said to the king, “Please let my sister Tamar come and make a couple of cakes in my sight, that I may eat from her hand.”

Then David sent home to Tamar, saying, “Go to your brother Amnon’s house and prepare food for him.” So Tamar went to her brother Amnon’s house, where he was lying down. And she took dough and kneaded it and made cakes in his sight and baked the cakes. And she took the pan and emptied it out before him, but he refused to eat. And Amnon said, “Send out everyone from me.” So everyone went out from him. Then Amnon said to Tamar, “Bring the food into the chamber, that I may eat from your hand.” And Tamar took the cakes she had made and brought them into the chamber to Amnon her brother. But when she brought them near him to eat, he took hold of her and said to her, “Come, lie with me, my sister.” She answered him, “No, my brother, do not violate me, for such a thing is not done in Israel; do not do this outrageous thing. As for me, where could I carry my shame? And as for you, you would be as one of the outrageous fools in Israel. Now therefore, please speak to the king, for he will not withhold me from you.” But he would not listen to her, and being stronger than she, he violated her and lay with her.

Then Amnon hated her with very great hatred, so that the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her. And Amnon said to her, “Get up! Go!” But she said to him, “No, my brother, for this wrong in sending me away is greater than the other that you did to me.” But he would not listen to her. He called the young man who served him and said, “Put this woman out of my presence and bolt the door after her.” Now she was wearing a long robe with sleeves, for thus were the virgin daughters of the king dressed. So his servant put her out and bolted the door after her. And Tamar put ashes on her head and tore the long robe that she wore. And she laid her hand on her head and went away, crying aloud as she went.– 2 Samuel 13:1-19 ESV

In this chapter, we will see yet another ugly consequence of David’s disobedience to the commands of God. He had been forgiven by God for his sins, but that did not mean there would be no consequences. In this case, we begin to see one of the unexpected consequences of David’s violation of God’s command for the king not to marry multiple wives. Three of David’s children are involved in this story. Two of them, Absalom and Tamar, were born to David by his wife, Maacah. Absalom was born while David reigned in Hebron. Tamar was most likely born after David had moved his capital to Jerusalem. Amnon was born in Hebron as well, but to a different mother, Ahinoam. David had many wives and even more children. Like any family, there would be sibling rivalry and conflicts between children. But his hyper-blended family was going to prove to be a breeding ground for trouble. And one of the things that will stand out as this story unfolds is David’s less-than-stellar parenting skills. He may have been a mighty warrior and military leader, but he appears to lack what it takes to lead his large collection of children. And this disconnection from his children will only grow worse and more deadly as the sordid details of the events become known to him.

We’re told that Amnon “loved” his half-sister, Tamar. She was young, beautiful and a virgin. And while the text claims that love was involved, it is interesting to note that the Hebrew word used to describe Amnon’s affection for Tamar can actually refer to sexual love. And as the story will so graphically demonstrate, Amnon’s attraction to his half-sister was purely physical. He lusted after her. So much so, that he made himself sick thinking about it. In his mind, Tamar was off-limits and he racked his brain constantly trying to figure out how he might have her, even as he was having immoral and inappropriate thoughts about her. With the advice of a close friend, Amnon devised a plot to carry out his lust-driven desire to have Tamar. And his father, David, unknowingly went along with it. He was oblivious to what was going on. So, he sent Tamar to take food to her “sick” brother, not knowing what Amnon had planned for her. And Amnon ended up raping his sister, against her will and despite her impassioned pleas to stop.

Tamar begged Amnon to consider what he was doing. She pleaded, “Don’t be foolish! Don’t do this to me! Such wicked things aren’t done in Israel. Where could I go in my shame? And you would be called one of the greatest fools in Israel. Please, just speak to the king about it, and he will let you marry me” (2 Samuel 13:12-13 NLT). It would not have been unprecedented for David to have agreed to a marriage between the two of them. It was a common practice in those days. Abraham had married his half-sister, Sarah (Genesis 20:12). But Amnon was not interested in marriage. He was not persuaded by Tamar’s warnings about the damage this act would do to his reputation. He could care less. He was driven by lust. And we know the deadly outcome of a life motivated by lust.

…each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. – James 1:14-15 ESV

As we see, once Amnon got what he wanted, his “love” for Tamar would turn to hatred. Having satisfied his sexual desire, he saw no more need for her. He threw her out like a used, unneeded object. He took her virginity by force and left her to deal with the shame, dishonor and humiliation all alone. She was thrown out by force. She was discarded like trash, used up and no longer of any value to Amnon. And she tore her robe and covered her head in ashes, a sign of mourning over her lost virginity. In that culture, Tamar would now be considered damaged goods. It did not matter that she was the daughter of the king. She was no longer a virgin. She would be treated with disdain and viewed with disrespect, regardless of the circumstances. No man would want her. He young life had been ruined, all because Amnon could not or would not contain his lust. He was a man driven by sexual desire. Any love he had for Tamar had been overshadowed by his lust. He had long ago stopped seeing her as his sister or even as a woman. She was an object, a trophy to be won and a forbidden desire to be satisfied – at any cost.

But this will not be the end of this story. It will get worse. As James so pointedly puts it: “and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” The most telling part of the story will be the role David plays. What will he do when he finds out what happens? How will he handle this devastating event that took place in his own home between two of his own children? David was the king, but he was also a father and a husband. How would he lead? He knew how to fight the enemies of Israel and win, but did he know how to do battle with the enemy within the walls of his own home? David was going to learn that inaction and avoidance would be inadequate reactions to what had happened. To do nothing, while the easier path to take, was going to prove disastrous and deadly.

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

Feeding the Monster Within.

In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.

It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned to her house. And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”

So David sent word to Joab, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent Uriah to David. When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab was doing and how the people were doing and how the war was going. Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet.” And Uriah went out of the king’s house, and there followed him a present from the king. But Uriah slept at the door of the king’s house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house. When they told David, “Uriah did not go down to his house,” David said to Uriah, “Have you not come from a journey? Why did you not go down to your house?” Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field. Shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing.” Then David said to Uriah, “Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back.” So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. And David invited him, and he ate in his presence and drank, so that he made him drunk. And in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house. – 2 Samuel 11:1-13 ESV

There is a saying found in the book of Proverbs that reads: “Stolen bread tastes sweet, but it turns to gravel in the mouth” (Proverbs 20:17 NLT). This little proverb is very applicable to the story found in chapter 11 of 2 Samuel, and what makes it even more interesting is that the book of Proverbs, in which it is found, was compiled by Solomon, the son of David and Bathsheba. It’s a simple proverbs, but carries profound weight. What is forbidden often has a strong appeal to us and, when we get what we desire, it can provide a short-lived sense of gratification. But the proverb goes on to warn that the forbidden, once consumed, quickly loses its appeal and can have serious consequences. Stolen bread that turns to gravel in the mouth would not only leave a disappointingly bad taste in your mouth, but a face full of broken teeth as well.

The story of David and Bathsheba is probably one of the most well-known stories in the Bible. How would you like it if one of the worst sins you have ever committed was chronicles in a book for everyone to read? One of the things about the Bible is its brutal honesty. It gives us the good, the bad, and the ugly regarding men. It doesn’t attempt to paint a rosy picture about mankind, but goes out of its way to reveal the presence of sin in the lives of even the most faithful characters. All you have to do is look at the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Noah, Peter and a host of other biblical characters to realize that sin is an ever-present problem even for the most godly individuals. And David was no exception. As has been pointed out before, David had an inordinate love affair with women. His attraction to women was his Achilles Heel, his weak spot. He had already amassed for himself a collection of wives who had fathered him a number of children. And this had been in direct disobedience to the command of God. And it’s interesting to note that David’s growing collection of wives never seemed to scratch the itch he had. His lust was never satisfied. He never seemed to reach the point where enough was enough. He had more than enough wives to satisfy his sexual needs, yet there seemed to be in David a desire for the forbidden, an overwhelming drive for “stolen bread”. He wanted what he could not have.

In the case of Bathsheba, David was in the wrong spot at the wrong time. The passage makes it painfully clear that it was spring, “the time when kings go out to battle” (2 Samuel 11:1 ESV). But David had chosen to remain in Jerusalem while his troops went off the war. He was the warrior-king. It was his responsibility to lead his troops into battle. He was to be the protector of the kingdom. He had a God-appointed role to fulfill, but he had delegated it to Joab. And this was the first step in David feeding the monster within. David knew he had a problem. He was well aware of the lust that lurked within himself. And by staying home in Jerusalem, David set himself up for failure. He created the ideal opportunity in which to allow his lust to get the better of him. He was not doing what he was supposed to be doing. He was not where he was supposed to be. And Satan, the enemy, took advantage of the situation, knowing David’s weakness and casting the perfect bait to lure David into sin. The apostle James reminds us:

“…remember, when you are being tempted, do not say, “God is tempting me.” God is never tempted to do wrong, and he never tempts anyone else. Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death.” – James 1:13-15 NLT

Full fish don’t usually take the bait. Well-fed fish are not as susceptible to the lure. And David’s lust for women had yet to be satisfied because he had a heart problem. He had an insatiable desire for women. And no amount of wives was going to satisfy what was, in actuality, a spiritual problem. By staying in Jerusalem and refusing to go to war, David set himself up for failure. He found himself with idle time and an overactive libido. And it just so happened that, as he woke in the afternoon from a nap, he went onto the roof of his palace and spied a woman bathing. And his desires enticed him and drug him away. He saw and he had to have. He lusted and he had to satisfy that lust. Even though he was clearly told that Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah, who happened to be one of David’s warriors. She was married, but that little fact carried no weight with David. David’s lust led him to commit adultery. And before he could realize it, the sweetness of the stolen bread turned to gravel in his mouth. Bathsheba broke the news to David that she was pregnant. The text had pointed out that Bathsheba, having just finished the cleansing for her menstrual cycle as prescribed by the law, was ready to conceive. And she did.

This surprising bit of news threw David into overdrive. He immediately attempted to do damage control, trying to come up with a way to cover up his sin. He called Uriah home from the battle front. David naturally assumed that Uriah would make a beeline to his home, have sexual relations with his wife, and the problem would be solved. But what David didn’t take into account was Uriah’s dedication to the king and allegiance to his fellow soldiers. He wasn’t going to allow himself the pleasure of his wife’s company while his brothers were still at war. So he slept with the servants of the king. And even when David got Uriah drunk, this faithful servant refused to go home. What a contrast we see between Uriah’s behavior and that of David, the king. It’s interesting to note that Uriah was a Hittite, a non-Jew, yet he proved to more faithful than the man after God’s own heart. His response to David’s enticement to go home and be with his wife reveals a great deal about Uriah’s integrity.

“The Ark and the armies of Israel and Judah are living in tents, and Joab and my master’s men are camping in the open fields. How could I go home to wine and dine and sleep with my wife? I swear that I would never do such a thing.” – 2 Samuel 11:11 NLT

David’s attempt at a cover up was blowing up in his face. His little deception was falling apart right before his eyes. And David was growing desperate. He had committed adultery. Now he was attempt to cover it up. He was also trying to get another man to sin against his own conscience. All in an attempt to cover up his own sin. David had made the mistake of feeding the monster within and now he was being devoured by it. His life was being consumed by his own sin nature.

The apostle Paul gives us a less-than-attractive list of the “fruit” that come as a result of giving our sin nature free reign in our lives:

When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these.– Galatians 5:19-21 NLT

It all had begun with David not being where he was supposed to be. Staying home in Jerusalem wasn’t necessarily a sin, but it proved to be unwise. Had David gone off to war like he was supposed to do, he wouldn’t have been on his rooftop that day. He wouldn’t have seen Bathsheba bathing. He wouldn’t have lusted. He wouldn’t have committed adultery. And there would have been no sin to cover up. Take a look again at the passage in James: “Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death.” Do you see the pattern?

Temptation – desires – enticement – sinful action – increased sin – death

The key to defeating the monster within is to starve it. Paul reminds us, “So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves” (Galatians 5:16 NLT). As long as David fed the monster within, he was going to find himself devoured from within. But if he had chosen to listen to the Spirit of God, and do what God had called him to do, this whole affair could have been avoided.

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

Driven By Desire and Distraction.

When David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, “Blessed be the Lord who has avenged the insult I received at the hand of Nabal, and has kept back his servant from wrongdoing. The Lord has returned the evil of Nabal on his own head.” Then David sent and spoke to Abigail, to take her as his wife. When the servants of David came to Abigail at Carmel, they said to her, “David has sent us to you to take you to him as his wife.” And she rose and bowed with her face to the ground and said, “Behold, your handmaid is a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord.” And Abigail hurried and rose and mounted a donkey, and her five young women attended her. She followed the messengers of David and became his wife.

David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel, and both of them became his wives. Saul had given Michal his daughter, David’s wife, to Palti the son of Laish, who was of Gallim. – 1 Samuel 25:39-44 ESV

In these closing verses of chapter 25, we are given a glimpse into an area of David’s life that was going to prove an ongoing problem for him throughout his life. He loved women. And this attraction to the opposite sex would be a constant thorn in his side even after becoming king. He would even pass on this propensity to his son, Solomon, who took David’s obsession with women to a whole new level.

Now King Solomon loved many foreign women. Besides Pharaoh’s daughter, he married women from Moab, Ammon, Edom, Sidon, and from among the Hittites. The Lord had clearly instructed the people of Israel, “You must not marry them, because they will turn your hearts to their gods.” Yet Solomon insisted on loving them anyway. He had 700 wives of royal birth and 300 concubines. And in fact, they did turn his heart away from the Lord. – 1 Kings 11:1-3 NLT

And all of this, as the passage reflects, was in direct violation of God’s commands.

The king must not take many wives for himself, because they will turn his heart away from the LORD. – Deuteronomy 17:17 NLT

Yet, after David finally became king, he would continue his practice of accumulating wives, in direct violation of God’s command.

After moving from Hebron to Jerusalem, David married more concubines and wives, and they had more sons and daughters. – 2 Samuel 5:13 NLT

David was a man after God’s own heart, but he was far from perfect. Women were his Achilles heel. And he found Abigail highly attractive. On top of that, she was godly, wise, assertive, brave, insightful, and a take-charge kind of woman. And it didn’t hurt that she was recently widowed. In fact, David didn’t seem to give Nabal’s body time to cool off before he made the move on Abigail, asking her to marry him.

The text ends with the statement that “David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel, and both of them became his wives” (1 Samuel 25:43 ESV). It also references Michal, David’s first wife, whom he had to leave behind when he fled from Saul. She was eventually given to another man, but David most likely didn’t know that at the time. So effectively, he had three wives at one time. Again, in direct disobedience to the will of God.

Why is this important? It provides us with an insight into the life of this man who would prove to be Israel’s greatest king and who, as has already been pointed out, was declared by God to be a man after His own heart. David loved God. He wanted to serve God. He had a deep desire to honor and obey God. But he also had a sin nature, just like the rest of us. And one of David’s weak spots would be his attraction to women. Satan would repeatedly use this weakness to his own advantage, tempting David to give in to his overactive libido. David would learn to justify his actions, excusing his sexual obsession as natural and normal. And yet, this sinful proclivity was a spiritual weakness, a chink in his armor that would make him an easy target for the enemy.

There are some less-than-flattering similarities between David and the Old Testament judge, Samson, when it comes to this issue. During a time when the Jews were being tormented by the Philistines because of their disobedience, God raised up Samson to be their judge and deliverer. He was a powerful man, but he had a particular weakness.

One day when Samson was in Timnah, one of the Philistine women caught his eye. When he returned home, he told his father and mother, “A young Philistine woman in Timnah caught my eye. I want to marry her. Get her for me.” – Judges 14:1-2 NLT

Like David, Samson couldn’t keep his eyes or his hands off of women. His mother and father tried to reason with Samson and talk him out of choosing a wife who was a pagan, but he would not listen.

“Get her for me! She looks good to me.” – Judges 14:3 NLT

Later on we read, “One day Samson went to the Philistine town of Gaza and spent the night with a prostitute” (Judges 16:1 NLT). And then, “Some time later Samson fell in love with a woman named Delilah, who lived in the valley of Sorek” (Judges 16:4 NLT). Each of these women would prove to be a thorn in Samson’s side. They would cause him much grief and sorrow. And his dalliance with Delilah would result in his own death.

David too, would struggle with a lustful, almost lascivious attraction to women. The most infamous story concerning David and his love affair with the opposite sex involves his affair with Bathsheba. David was the king. He was rich, powerful, and happily married to several women already. But one day, as he walked on the rooftop patio of his palace, he spied Bathsheba bathing alfresco. David was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The passage tells us “In the spring of the year, when kings normally go out to war, David sent Joab and the Israelite army to fight the Ammonites…However, David stayed behind in Jerusalem” (2 Samuel 11:1 NLT). David wasn’t where he was supposed to be. He was the warrior-king, but instead of doing battle with the Ammonites, David would end up battling his own lusts and losing. His lust for Bathsheba quickly turned to action and he had sex with her. When their affair resulted in her pregnancy, he began a cover-up campaign, that eventually led him to have her husband, a faithful soldier in his army, purposely exposed and killed on the front lines of battle. All so David could marry his wife and cover up his illicit affair.

James provides us with a stark explanation of how this whole process works.

Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death. – James 1:14-15 NLT

David was a man after God’s own heart, but he had a problem. His heart was divided. He loved women. He saw them as a source of satisfaction, comfort, pleasure and self-worth. They made him feel good. They provided him with companionship. Perhaps they helped fulfill his need for conquest. Whatever drove his love affair with women, it would end up distracting him from what should have been his primary focus: His love for and dedication to God.

The chapter ends with the statement that “Saul had given Michal his daughter, David's wife, to Palti the son of Laish, who was of Gallim” (1 Samuel 25:44 ESV). This is important, because, while it might be easy to use this as an explanation why David took Abigail to be his wife, it falls short. Years later, when David became king and Saul was dead, he would send for Michal, demanding that Ish-bosheth, the sole remaining heir to the throne of Saul, hand her over.

So David sent messengers to Ish-bosheth, Saul’s son, saying, “Give me my wife Michal, to whom I was betrothed for a hundred foreskins of the Philistines.”  Ish-bosheth sent and took her from her husband, from Paltiel the son of Laish. But her husband went with her, weeping as he went, and followed her as far as Bahurim. Then Abner said to him, “Go, return.” So he returned. – 2 Samuel 3:14-16 ESV

In spite of the fact that David had married multiple wives since his departure from Saul’s palace, he had not been able to stop thinking about Michal. He had to have her. So he had her forcibly removed from her husband. And like so many of David’s decisions regarding women, this one would prove to be less-than-ideal. Michal would end up despising David and his God. Their marriage would produce little in the way of love and no offspring.

David had a propensity to be driven by desire, and that desire would prove to be a distraction throughout his life. Even in his old age, near the point of death, an attractive woman would play a significant role in his life.

King David was now very old, and no matter how many blankets covered him, he could not keep warm. So his advisers told him, “Let us find a young virgin to wait on you and look after you, my lord. She will lie in your arms and keep you warm.”

So they searched throughout the land of Israel for a beautiful girl, and they found Abishag from Shunem and brought her to the king. The girl was very beautiful, and she looked after the king and took care of him. But the king had no sexual relations with her. – 1 Kings 1:1-4 NLT

We all have weaknesses. Each of us has our spiritual Achilles heel, which Satan, our enemy, knows about and takes full advantage of at every opportunity. He tempts, lures and entices us. He baits the hook with the very thing we find most attractive. It may be sex, popularity, material possessions, pleasure, a sense of accomplishment, power, or any of a number of things. In essence, our weakness is nothing more than an insight into what we have made an idol in our life – a god that serves as a stand-in or substitute for the one true God. For David, women because his go-to choice for satisfaction, self-worth, and a sense of joy. Sexual pleasure was his idol of choice. What is yours? What do you turn to other than God? What do you worship in place of God? Anything that we allow to rob God of worship is a weakness in our lives that must be confessed and removed. When God said, “You must not have any other god but me” (Exodus 20:3 NLT), He meant it. And David was going to have to learn to believe it.

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

Self-indulgence.

For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. – 1 John 2:16 NLT

Self-indulgence: indulging one's own desires, passions, whims, etc., especially without restraint. The second description John gives us to let us know if we are having a love affair with the world is a craving for everything we see or, as the ESV puts it, “the desires of the eyes.” But as I stated in my last post, this is really all about love of self. While it appears to be a reciprocal in nature, it is really one-directional. The world, under the control of its Satan, is only more than happy to oblige our obsession with self and give us what we think we want, need or deserve. It gladly feeds our insatiable appetite for more, like a drug dealer supplies the fix for a junkie. No love is involved. And in the end, a love of self becomes self-destructive. Which is why Jesus warned us that the world would hate us. It seeks our destruction, not our delight. So when we turn to the world to help us fulfill our craving for all we see, it is more than willing to play its part. In fact, it feeds the monster inside us through a steady diet of images and messages designed to tease us and tempt us to have what we don't really need. Having spent 29 years in the advertising business, I am quite familiar with an old adage that says, “advertising is designed to get people to buy things they don't need with money they don't have to impress people they don't like.” Sadly, there is a lot of truth to that claim. Ads for products and services are designed to get us to become dissatisfied with what we DO have and desire something we DON’T have. A newer car. A bigger home in a better neighborhood. A different perfume that will make us more attractive or a new outfit that will make us more popular. In longing for these things, we make them little gods, expecting them to deliver to us and for us the contentment, joy, satisfaction and sense of self-worth we long for. And it is not that these things are bad. In fact, this symptom of worldly love is quite different than the desire of the flesh we talked about yesterday. That is when we desire or crave something God has forbidden. We say yes to what God has no to. But the desire of the eyes is when we say yes to what God has NOT said yes to. In other words, we indulge our desires without including God in the decision. And for most of us, we do it quite often. Just think about all the purchases you make without giving God's input a second thought. Would He want you to have that new car? What would He think about your purchase of a new outfit or a new set of golf clubs. It is not that these things are evil or wrong. It is a question of whether they are truly needed. They are typically wants and desires, not necessities.

Over in the gospel of Matthew, we have the words of Jesus warning us to avoid the love of money, because as believers, it is impossible for us to serve two masters. We will end up loving one and hating the other. Then Jesus says, “That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear. Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing?” (Matthew 6:25 NLT). Then He uses the birds and the flowers as examples of God's ability to feed and care for His creation. It is all a matter of faith. Do we trust God to provide what we really need or are we going to give in to our natural desire to purchase our satisfaction and contentment from the temporary things this world offers. Jesus would tell us, “So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need” (Matthew 6:31-33 NLT). There is nothing wrong with buying a new dress, a new flat screen TV, a more reliable car, a more comfortable home or new carpet for the living room. It is a matter of motivation. So often, we are driven by our sin nature and we don't even know it. We are struggling with discontentment and dissatisfaction with life, so we become easy targets for the advertising messages designed to feed our ego, stroke our pride, and make us the center of our world. The danger is that we are to keep God at the center of our world. We are to seek His Kingdom, not our own. We are to fulfill His desires, not our own. Self-indulgence is self-love without restraint, without oversight. It would be like a child let free in a candy store without their parents and with free access to all the treats on the shelves. The outlook, from the child's perspective would be bright, but the outcome would be less than happy. God longs to be involved in every area of our lives. He wants to be included in our decisions. He wants to be consulted in what we do and how we spend our money. Because He cares. He knows our hearts. He can see the inward motivation and help us steer clear of self-indulgent behavior that is ultimately self-destructive.