The
Consequences Of Sin Can Outlive Us
The apostle Paul declared in Galatians 6:7- '`Do not be
deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also
reap." There has always been consequence to sin from the moment Adam and Eve disobeyed
God in the garden (Gen
2-3). Man should not think that he can
escape the eye of God.
King David
was a man after God's own heart (Acts 13:22) and became the greatest king to sit upon the throne of
Israel. Whenever David's name is mentioned there is always a sidebar of remembering
the incident with Bathsheba, wife of Uriah the Hittite. In 2 Samuel 1 1 we read of David walking on the roof
of his house one evening
when he "saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful to behold" (2Sam 1 1:2). David brought Bathsheba into his
palace and lay with her. Later she told the King that she was with child. Wanting to cover the
incident up, her
husband was recalled from the besieging of the city of Rabbah.
Uriah the
Hittite was one of the mighty men of David (2Sam 23:39. 1 Chr. 11:41). He was a man of honor and
nobility in service to his king. When called home from the war, he refused to enter his
house as long as his men and the ark were engaged in battle. Failing at other attempts to coerce Uriah
in bed with his wife, David sent an order
(by the hand of Uriah) to his general, Joab, to place Uriah ire the heat of battle and then withdraw. Uriah carried his death
notice and died in the battle. It was
later God sent Nathan the prophet to David to declare unto 111111 the
judgment of the
Lord upon David & Bathsheba, the child and the descendants
of David. The immediate consequence of
David s sill was the condemnation of God. The grace of God allowed David to live (2Sam. 12:13) but the child would
die. Further consequence that David
Would suffer is the sword would never leave his house and adversaries would rise up against him-even from his own household (see Absalom and Adonijah). The house of David
suffered many years of hardship because
of David's sin.
The punishment outlined by
Nathan (2Sam. 121:7-15) was immediate at least in the lifetime of David. The sad part of David's sin was that he would forever
be marked as the man who took Uriah's wife. When the account of Abijam's reign
in Judah is given in the book of 1 Kings it says: "Because David
did what was right in the sight of the Lord,
and had not turned aside from anything that He commanded him all the days of
his life, except in the case of Uriah the Hittite" (1 Kings 15:5). The
consequence of sin remained.
Sin will take you farther than you want to go and keep
you longer than you want to stay. This does not dismiss forgiveness as God forgave David but the
reality of the reaping
of sin sowed in a moment's reckless folly will blacken the pages of life and sometimes long after a person
has died. "O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness"
(1 Tim 6:11). Eric