A youth pastor came to my office. He said that the conference he was attending was in Las Vegas. Though he never gambled before, he wanted to understand why people were hooked on gambling. So he decided to spend his loose change. Before long, however, he realized that the slot machine had emptied his wallet and also his daily limit of cash from the bank machine. He came home with a sober realization that he, too, was no different from others who yield to temptation.

How we respond to temptations can either make us or break us. When we continue to yield to temptation, we will eventually become unfit and useless.

The story of David's fall in 2 Samuel 11 is very well known. There is no need to go into detail other than just to sketch the situation so as to refresh our memory and to draw important lessons for us today.

David's Fall
David committed adultery with the wife of one of his generals, Uriah, while his general was out on duty fighting for the country. When the wife got pregnant, David tried to cover up his act by summoning the general and encouraging him to unite with his wife. The plot failed because the general refused to enjoy the comforts of home while his men were risking their lives in the battle. David resorted to a cold-blooded murder: placing the general in the front line and then cruelly withdrawing support so that he would be 'killed' by the enemy.

David may have fooled everyone, but not God. Nathan, the prophet of God, confronted David and condemned the act. Quick repentance came from David. However, things would never look the same again following his fall.

From his failure, we can learn several precious lessons that we can apply to our own life.

Temptation will strike when you are least expecting.

The first point we must bear in mind is that temptation will strike us when we are least suspecting. It moves like a snake, ever so slowly and subtly. When it sees the prey in sight, it moves in. Unless we are on guard at all times, we are the next victim.

When we examine the proceeding chapters of 2 Samuel, we learn that things were going well for David: Israel had full control over Ammonites and other military threats. After so many years of 'being on the run' (from Saul, Philistines and other enemies) David finally settled down. The ark of the Lord was brought in safely. David's throne was now well established in the city of Jerusalem he just named as capital.

But little did he know that while his fortress was well protected, his real enemy was encroaching from within. Just when he was least expecting, the temptation from within was knocking at his door. David had his country in peace, but he had no control over his own heart. In Proverbs, we come across an important lesson:

Above all else, guard your heart; for it is the wellspring of life. (Prov 4:23).

Be aware of 'peace times.' That is when the tempter will strike. Don't be mesmerized by your own strength and your accomplishments, lest you learn to trust in yourself. Instead, we need to be watchful and prayerful at all times (Col 4:2), even maintaining, what I would call, 'a healthy dosage of mistrust' over ourselves and what we are capable of doing. We must not think that we are invincible. We are prone to fall!

Meditation upon God's greatness, thanksgiving, and humble confession — all on daily basis — will keep us in the grip of his grace at all times.

The fall consists of many wrong steps, not just one big mistake.

We must reject the myth that the fall consists of one big (and often unfortunate) mistake. We hear of a prominent Christian leader who fall 'overnight' over 'an unfortunate incidence.' And we take pity on him for the tragedy.

However, upon closer examination of the characters and habits of fallen comrades, we will come to the conclusion that very rarely will a person go from morally upright to down right immoral over one big mistake or one oversight. Instead, the usual moral failure consists of many small, but surely wrong steps taken.

David had many steps he took wrong, each succeeding step being more serious than the previous one. It means that he could have got out of the mess before taking the next course of action, the sooner the better. But right to the end, he chose not to get out, until he played his last card. Let's look at each step that he has taken wrong.

Not going to war (complacency) --- 'In the spring at the time when kings go off to war' explains it all. It was David's expected role as the leader to lead his troops to the battle in the spring time. He was supposed to go out, but he did not. Already, we can sense something was not right. This led him to much 'free' time on hand. When a person does not work or has too much time on hand, he begins to get bored and fills his life with unhealthy things.

Watching a woman bath --- There was essentially nothing wrong with taking a walk on top of his roof. We will grant that the afternoon had been rather hot and that he needed to take in the evening's cool breeze. It is also not his fault that a woman should take a bath at that time and that he happened to take a walk. We will also grant that it was not David's fault that the woman was very beautiful.

However, the Hebrew idom 'to look at' is there in vs. 3, though NIV does not show it (literally, 'she was very beautiful to look at .'). Hence there was some value judgment going on in David's mind. We can see that 'a glance became a gaze' (J. Baldwin, 1 and 2 Samuel, p. 232). As C.S. Lewis once said, 'you can't stop a bird from flying over your head, but you can surely stop it from building its nest on your head.' At this point David could have said to himself, 'that is enough.' But he did not. He made the next move.

Checking out the identity of the woman --- David sent a man to find out who the beautiful woman is. Her identity is clearly revealed. Here, David blatantly ignored the fact that her husband was one of his loyal soldiers and went ahead with his next move. Again, we know from hindsight that he could have stopped right here. But he did not. Temptation is harder to refuse at its advanced stage.

Sleeping with her --- As king, David had the power to bring the woman in. In today's world we could think of the abuse of positional authority. But in those days, such a term as 'sexual harassment' was not yet invented. The fact that Bethesheba 'had purified herself from her uncleanliness' in vs. 5 shows that she was very vulnerable to pregnancy (fertile) and that the subsequent pregnancy would be the responsibility of David, not her husband.

Plotting to get ride of Bethesheba's husband --- Here, the face of sin gets uglier and uglier. No longer are we dealing with the man's lust. The king's judgment and moral fortitude are in serious question. Lust leads to adultery; adultery to murder plot and deceit.

When all was over, a great damage was done to the cause of God's holiness: David, the man after God's own heart, had violated four of the Ten Commandments:

Thou shall not commit adultery

Thou shall not kill

Thou shall not lie

Thou shall not covet . thy neighbor's wife

The point is clear: David did not become an offender overnight. He did not commit all these heinous crimes in one shot. One thing led to another and things only got worse.

The fall consists of many wrong steps, not just one big mistake. That means that when we know we are in the wrong, we need to get out.

Some years ago, George Barna wrote a book with an intriguing title, the Frog in a Kettle. The illustration in the book pretty well carried the message of the book: If you put a frog in the kettle with hot water, it will jump out in no time. If you put a frog in the kettle with water at a room temperature and gradually heat up the water, it will not jump out but die in it.

Remember the temptations that encroach in ever small and 'manageable' steps. We need to be on guard at all times. Lord, help us.

Our sins can be forgiven, but we must live through the consequences of our sins.

After we fall, we can always go to God. When we confess our sin, we know that God forgives us from all our sins. Our broken fellowship with God is restored and renewed once again.

However, God's forgiveness does not mean that we will live freely without any consequences. After a fall, we still need time to recover from the effects of sin (emotionally, financially, physically, spiritually .), especially in cases of those sins that implicate our loved ones.

Here, we need not confuse ourselves with the Catholic doctrine which teaches 'the temporal punishment of our sins.' In the Catholic teaching, when we sin, the Church has the power to forgive our sins out of 'her rich treasury of merits,' but we must endure the temporal punishment of our sins in this life or in the next (in purgatory). In evangelical theology, we reject such teaching as unbiblical. When Christ forgives our sins, that is enough. We do not need to work for the pardon.

However, in proclaiming that Jesus Christ has forgiven all our sins — past, present, and future — we do not teach the consequence-free 'easy believism,' where immediate forgiveness becomes like a license to continue in sin. The scripture is very clear that we must live through the consequences of our sins, not as a resulting punishment, but as the natural consequence of the things we have done or caused.

In the case of David, after confessing his sins to the prophet Nathan (see Psalm 51), he still had to deal with the effects of his sin: particularly the rebellion of his son Absolom (the story picks up in 2 Kings 13). Absolom certainly lost his respect for the father and used the idea of sleeping with his father's concubines as a way of getting a message across. Just as David had no regard for another man's wife, Absolom learned to treat his father's wives in the most contemptuous way.

David's fall was horrendous. The Bible instructs, 'Keep the marriage bed pure' (Heb 13:4). We will do well to heed this command. Once this command of faithfulness is violated, it is very difficult, though not impossible, to restore the broken marriage.

Our Response
Let us remember the dark sides of temptation and the real threats that it poses. May the Lord guide you each step.