In today’s episode, we focus on the infamous sin of King David, the man renowned for his unwavering faith, yet led astray by his human desires. Learn how his deliberate actions set off a chain of events that affected many lives. Unpack David’s journey from unrepentant sin towards redemption as illustrated in the heartfelt words of his prayer found in Psalm 51, offering a timeless lesson on repentance and forgiveness.
Greetings, friends and new listeners, and welcome to The Sound of Faith. I’m Sharon Otts, thanking you for joining us today because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Today’s message, The Ripple Effect of David’s Sins, is quite informative. He was the only man in the Bible of whom God testified, I have found David to be a man after mine own heart. Yet he willfully committed the sin of adultery, using his kingly authority to steal another man’s wife. But what was worse was the cover-up and the collateral damage that created many victims in the ripple effect of David’s sins. So now the child has become very sick and now he’s died. So we have another ripple in the degree of David’s sin. And we see that the collateral damage, probably this has been the thing that may have broken his heart the most, is when the baby died. Now, we don’t know all that David prayed during that time, but we know that Nathan’s words hit him so hard in his spiritual gut. Those words hit him so hard that during those seven days of prayer and fasting, he was doing more than just praying for that child to live. He was getting his soul purified. He was repenting of his sin and he was not doing it casually. He realized his sins were great, his sins were gross. He realized that God was justified in pouring out judgment upon him. But he wanted to get right with God. He couldn’t undo the collateral damage. He could not go back and fix it. He could never bring back Uriah. He could never bring back those men. He could never bring back his baby. But he wanted to be right with God. And going forward, he wanted to be the king that God had anointed him to be. Amen. Thank God he’s the God of second chances. He’s the God of third chances and fourth and fifth chances. All God requires is an honest heart, a repentant heart. Not somebody who’s trying to cover up their tracks. David had done that for almost a year. Bible scholars believe it’s about a year, at least nine months, that he covered his tracks and did not repent and thought he got away with it. Amen? Thought he got by. But we do have a record of some of the things that David prayed during that time. And it’s in Psalm 51. And this records some of his desperate words of repentance to God. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies. Blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. Verse 3 is so important. For I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. For the rest of his life, every time he looked at Bathsheba, beautiful as she was, she was a reminder of his sin of adultery, of the murder of her husband Uriah and those men, and the death of their child. Verse 4, against you, you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight, that you might be justified when you speak and be clear when you judge. David was ready to come clean, clean. Amen. He was ready to be honest about being honest. Amen. Twice in the first verse, he says, have mercy on me. He knew that his only hope was God’s mercies. But thank God, God’s mercies are fresh and new each morning. David said in another psalm, as high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are your mercies. Unto us. For you know our frame. And you know we are but dust. And like as a father has pity, has mercy on his children. So the Lord has mercy on us. Because he knows we’re flesh. Amen. And he knows that in this flesh there dwells no good thing. But the motions of sin are in the flesh. And that’s why we in the New Testament are so blessed. Because of the cross we can keep the flesh crucified. Amen. Amen? But David did understand the power of the blood of the animal sacrifices to blot out his sin. He understood that, but he did not have the power of the blood of God, the Son of God, to deliver him from the motions of sin. Amen? but he did understand the power of the blood. And he said against you and you only, I have sinned. Now we may be thinking, hold up, David, that’s not true. You sinned against Bathsheba. You sinned against her husband, Uriah. You sinned against Joab. You sinned against the men who died with Uriah. You sinned against those 10 concubines. You sinned against that baby. And he sinned against his own body. We’ll see in a moment. But you see, in David’s mind, he understood that his gravest sin was against God. Against God. Whenever we come to that realization. When we understand. That something we are doing. Is displeasing God. I speak for myself. Hopefully for you. It does something to me. And I realize. I do not want to displease God. I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t want to break his heart. I don’t want to incur his anger. amen and so David realized at the very core he had sinned against God he said I have done this evil in your sight seen nobody else knew your I didn’t know he was sleeping with his wife he didn’t know she was pregnant with David’s baby Joab didn’t know when he was told to do these things what was going on nobody knew But David said, I’ve realized now I did this thing in your sight. Amen. Sometimes we might think we’re getting by with something. Amen. Especially when people are getting involved in adultery and they have all these clandestine twists here and there. And they make sure they meet at a place where nobody’s ever, ever going to see them. And nobody’s ever going to find them there. Amen. Go across town somewhere where nobody knows you and park in some industrial park at the end of some dead end road. Amen. Under where a bunch of trees are hanging down. But God sees it. Amen. For over nine months, he had hidden that sin, but he had never hidden it from God. And now he understood. What he had done against God. The one that David loved the most. The one who David wanted to go after his heart and go after his heart. The one that David initiated worship in the tabernacle that had never been there before. Singing and music and dancing in the house of God had never been there. David, the worshiper. His love for God had caused him to do all that. And now he realized he had sinned against God. Verse 5. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. And there you have the fact that we’re all born with the sin nature. Everyone. I don’t care how nice somebody is that you think they’re the greatest person. They have the sin nature. And when you have the sin nature, you’re going to sin. Exactly. Amen. If you don’t get born again from above and get God’s divine nature, you’re going to sin. Here’s verse six is another good one. Behold, you desire truth in the inward parts. And in the hidden part, you shall make me to know wisdom. God wants truth in our hearts. all of us in our lives at some place in some point especially when you’re young you make mistakes you do things and and you’re in that reckless time in your life reckless you’re reckless you don’t think about consequences you don’t think about the ripple effect you don’t think about collateral damage amen but then when god confronts you with your sin what do you do what do you do Because there is a crucial point. You sinned. You can’t go back and undo it. You can’t unscramble eggs. But what you do when God confronts you is of the utmost importance. Because if you have an honest heart and don’t cover it up, you will be much better off. There will be pain. There will be consequences. But nothing like it will be if you don’t acknowledge your sin and try to cover it up. And the only way that you can do that is to have truth in your inward parts. Amen? In your inward parts. And for those seven days that David was lying on his face, God was giving him truth in his inward parts. He said, in the hidden part of me, let me know your wisdom. I never ever want to get even close to doing something like this again. And there is no record that David ever sinned like this ever again. or even close to it even when people were cursing him and throwing dirt at him and his people would tell him you need to get him and lock him up or something david said let him alone let him curse me go ahead just let him curse me he said maybe number one i deserve it or number two if they curse me god will have to turn around and bless me so just let him alone you see the difference in his heart amen he said i want to have truth in the inward parts Okay, we stopped at verse 6. Let’s look at verse 7. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Purge me with hyssop. Hyssop was part of the tabernacle sacrificial thing where they offered up the animals. Part of it, they had to take a branch and dip it in hyssop, and they had to do this. And you think, well, what in the world is that? Hyssop was a particular type of plant that produced an oil that is actually like an antibacterial, an antifungal, a disinfectant. And I take it every single day. I take it every day. You say, well, where do you buy hyssop, Sister Sharon? Well, let me tell you. I take oil of oregano every day. And I take it because it’s part of the protocol that I feel like the Lord has me on after I was diagnosed with the breast cancer. Amen. And I take other natural substances, but that’s one of them because it’s an antifungal, antibacterial. And if you are battling constantly with sinus problems and you never get well and you always got an infection, you never get over it, then you ought to try oil of oregano. I mean, you know we eat oregano in our pizza, right? But I’m talking about the oil that comes in little tiny pills. They’re smaller than your little pinky fingertip. So they’re not hard to take and they’re not that expensive. And so the indication is, is if you wash me with hyssop, all the fungus of sin is going. All the bacteria of sin is going. All the corruption of my sin is leaving me. If you wash me with hyssop, amen, if you’ll do that. And if you will cleanse me, I will be whiter than snow. Verse 8. Make me to hear joy and gladness that the bones which you have broken may rejoice. Now, he didn’t have literal broken bones. But I want you to know that when you’re battling with guilt and sin, the whole time you’re hiding and covering up sin, the inside of you is in so much turmoil. And you are going to have guilt on you. You’re always going to be wondering, do they know? What did they mean by that? Huh? They just said that. I wonder if they know. Oh, I wonder if somebody’s going to find out. What’s going to happen if this comes out? And then you’ve got all that guilt inside of you. It is making you sick to your stomach, literally. It’s causing you sleepless nights. It’s causing you to walk around with something going on that half the time you can’t eat. Your food doesn’t even sit right in your belly. You’ve got all of this going on in you. Your body, your body is reacting differently. To all the turmoil that’s in your spirit and in your heart. And the only way it’s going to get better and get well is if you acknowledge your sin. And let God wash you and cleanse you. Amen. And then you’re going to hear joy and gladness. Come on now. He was a dancer. He was a singer. He was an instrumentalist. He was a worshiper. Imagine what his life was like during that nine months or however. Do you think that he was going around singing all the time and playing his harp and dancing before the Lord? No, he’d lost his joy. He lost all that. How miserable was he? Okay, so now he’s got a new wife to have sex with and he’s got a baby on the way. But nothing but nothing can take the place of the Spirit of God, the joy of God in your heart. No sex can do that. No nothing, no one, no matter how wonderful and beloved they are, once you have tasted the anointing, once you have been spoiled by the anointing of God, those things will never satisfy you. They will never give you joy. And when you’ve lost your joy, you are one unhappy, miserable person. Amen. That’s what happens. But he said, Lord, make me to have joy. Verse 9. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. I’ve got a wrong spirit. I’ve got a lying spirit, a deceiving spirit, a murderous spirit, a slandering spirit. I’ve got a spirit that’s made me affect all of these beloved people and cause them to suffer. Because I’ve got a wrong spirit in me. It started with a seed of lust. My eyes saw. And then I thought about it. And then I acted on it. And James said when lust is conceived, it brings forth sin. And sin, when it is finished, brings forth death. He said, renew a right spirit in me. a spirit of righteousness, a spirit of godliness. Verse 11, cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. We can safely say the Holy Spirit had already left But what David is saying is don’t take them away from me for good. Don’t take your Holy Spirit from me and then I’ll never experience it again and never feel the glory and the anointing of his presence again. Amen? I tell you, this is the kind of prayer that changed his circumstances. Don’t cast me away from your presence. I can’t bear to live the rest of my life without your presence. I wouldn’t know what to do without God’s presence. I would probably crack because I wouldn’t be able to sleep all night long. I would rustle in the bed. I would not be able to interact with the people I do love and the people in my life if I didn’t have God’s presence. I would just rather go right now. Take me right here and right now. Take me right from this pulpit. Sitting in the pew. Then I should ever lose your presence. Amen? Amen. Verse 12, restore unto me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with your free spirit. Oh, restore the joy. You know, this is the David that said, I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord. During that nine months, that wasn’t David’s song anymore. But he wanted to get back to that place in God where God upheld him with his free spirit. Because where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. He wanted to get back there. Where he could go into God’s house. Amen. And have the joy of the Lord be a strength. Drop down to verse 14. This is really telling. Verse 14. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of your righteousness. He said, God, I am guilty of blood. I am guilty of the blood of Uriah. I’m guilty of the blood of the men that died with him. I’m guilty of the blood of this baby. But deliver me. And when you do. I will open my mouth. I will sing aloud. I will sing of your righteousness. And he goes on to talk about the house of the Lord. And so we see here, this is the prayer of someone who is truly repentant before God. Now I want to ask you something in closing here. What do you think was worse? The original sin of adultery or the cover up? How many think it was the original sin? How many think it was the cover-up? That’s 100%. The cover-up. Let me speculate for a second or two. What if when she said, David, I’m pregnant. Now remember, according to the scriptures, it was that one and only time and she got pregnant. Because it said that he lay with her and then she went home. And then later she says, oh, I’m pregnant. So I’m sure that David, during that time, he might have been thinking, you know, what did I do? And, you know, I can’t do this again. But when she said, I am pregnant, now he has a whole other scenario facing him. So what if instead of doing what he did, Uriah would have come home, seen that she was pregnant, figured it out. It can’t be my baby. So whose is it? And she eventually would have said, what would have happened? Well, you know, this happened. The king sent for me. I didn’t know what to do. What was I going to do? I went over and I got pregnant. So what if Uriah, being a very godly man, suppose he would have said… Well, I’m not going to put you out to be stoned to death. I love you, and I don’t want that to happen to you. So you know what? I’m going to forgive you, and we’ll raise the baby like it’s mine, and nobody will ever have to know. And I’m sure that that wouldn’t have been a bad outcome at all. David would have probably been glad. Man, you know, it could have been a lot worse. He had plenty of kids. I don’t think he was going to worry about not raising that one child. But that would have been the end of it. I mean, he could have kept it between the two of them. What if he would have said, well, wait a minute. No, I’m through with you. I’m going to divorce you. If he would have divorced her and said, I’m not going to have you killed, but I’m going to divorce you, then we know that David would have said, come live in the palace and raise this child in the palace. After all, this is my child. So come and live here and raise your child. But you see, when he went about to cover up his sins, he escalated everything, and he went from a terrible sin of adultery to the sin of murder. Amen? The ripple effect of his sin was worse than the original sin. And we always have to remember that. And I’m not saying that’s anybody sitting here today. I don’t know. I’m just saying if things like that face you in your life, you’ve got to realize that when you go to cover sin, things are only going to get a lot worse. As I mentioned a moment before, suppose someone has a secret affair and the woman ends up pregnant. Don’t add sin to sin by going and getting an abortion. Don’t do what David did and commit murder. Got quiet in here. Got real quiet. Because I guarantee you that sometime it will come out. And I guarantee you that God knows it. And he sees when you go into that abortion clinic. He sees that. Amen? It’s going to come back. Amen? That’s not acknowledging your sin and being… righteous, and being repentant. How can you say, I’ve repented, God. I repent of that adultery. We’re breaking off this affair. I repent. Please forgive me, God. And God says, I forgive you for adultery. And then you march into the abortion center. You think God’s going to believe you? Oh, you’re getting quieter and quieter. All right, let’s get to Scripture. Real quick, turn to Psalm 32. Now, if all this is under the blood, then don’t get nervous. If all this is in the past and under the blood, we’re not digging up what’s under the blood. I’m saying going forward. Amen? What’s under the blood is blotted out. I preached that on Easter. It’s blotted out. So don’t feel guilty about stuff that’s repented and under the blood. Like I said, you can’t unscramble eggs. Chapter 32, David says, blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Not covered because you tried to cover it up because you can’t, but because the blood. And think about this. David’s talking about the blood of a cow, a bullock. A lamb. We have the blood of Jesus. How much more shall the blood of Jesus blot out our sins and cleanse us from our sin? Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputes not iniquity and in whose spirit there is no guile. No cover up, no deception. Listen to what he said. When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night, thy hand was heavy upon me. My moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Now this tells you how miserable he was. His body was reacting. He couldn’t sleep at night. He felt like his bones were full of arthritis and burning. And he was just, he felt like he was just on fire all the time. He had pain, literal pain in his body, not to mention in his soul. But verse 5. I acknowledge my sin unto you, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. For this shall everyone that is godly pray unto you in a time when you may be found. So the answer is, when we’re in these kind of situations, is to acknowledge the sin and bring it before God. Amen? Because God, he has the divine, unchallenged, unique ability to work all things together for good. That’s something you can’t do. That’s something I can’t do. And those worst situations in our lives that it looks like, yeah, God, let me see you bring something good out of this mess. Have you ever thought that? Let me see you bring something good out of this mess. And let’s say, for instance, the child is not aborted and the child lives. And the child grows up to be a wonderful person with glory. contributing to civilization and society, becomes a backbone of the family, goes on to do great things. Amen? In life and great things for God. God is able to work all things together for good. He’s just looking for us to have an honest and a pure heart. Amen? How many want to have an honest heart before the Lord? Come on, stand on your feet this morning. Amen. so we’re going to ask the lord we’re going to pray a prayer that all of us can pray every one of us because all of us either have been in situations maybe not as grievous as this one or we have loved ones and friends on our minds that we want to help them and we we’re kind of stymied at how to help them You know, there’s nothing that you can improve on but the truth. You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. David didn’t get free until he acknowledged the truth. Amen? So let’s pray here. Join hands if you want, if there’s someone near you. Father, we come to you in the name of Jesus. We come saying, Lord, we are weak, but you are strong. We come saying, Lord, we know that in our flesh there dwells no good thing. And we know that sometimes we are tricked by the enemy and we have fallen into temptation. Or we have been in a battle where it seems like we can’t get past that temptation. We have not fallen into sin. We have stood fast and we have not given place to the flesh and to sin. But the battle is raging against us. And we feel like we’re being overwhelmed. And we don’t know what to do. And we feel like we don’t know how to have the victory. In the name of Jesus, I take authority over spirits. Spirits of temptation. Spirits of lust. spirits of wickedness, spirits that would come and try to overwhelm us in our weakness and in our flesh, lying spirits that would try to blind our minds to the consequences. Lord, right now in the authority you’ve given the church to use the name of Jesus, we bind Satan, we bind his hold, we command him to go we command those evil thoughts to leave we command those sinful dreams to leave we command their sinful things before our eyes right now Lord cleanse us wash us clean us deliver us set us free We want to be free. We want to be faithful first and foremost to you, God. To you, God. We want to be faithful to you. We want to be faithful to our husbands, our wives, our children, our parents, our loved ones, our friends. We want to be faithful. Father, right now, take that holy hyssop and wash us and cleanse us and deliver us and restore joy and victory and power and strength in Jesus’ name. And Lord, give us wisdom when we deal with people that come to us and they’re in a precarious state and Satan is there. And like you said to Cain, sin lies at the door. but lord help us to help them to close the door on that sin to close that door and enter into the presence of god in your presence where there is fullness of joy and your right hand where there are pleasures evermore help us to have wisdom to be able to help those who need someone a godly person To encourage them. And to give them your word. We say yes Lord. We say yes Lord. As David said when he went on his prayer. If you do this for me God. Then I will teach sinners your way. I will teach them the right way. I will preach righteousness. For what you have done for me. Do that for us I pray. In Jesus name. Amen. I hope you are being enlightened by this intriguing message, the ripple effect of David’s sins. This larger-than-life king was a man after God’s own heart. He was Israel’s heroic giant slayer, but he did not slay the giant of sexual lust that spurred him to commit adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of one of his righteous captains in the army. He took an innocent woman and made her an adulteress. When she became pregnant, he devised a cover-up. When it failed, David’s unrepentant heart deceived him to commit the murder of the innocent husband Uriah. The ripple effect of this evil deed forced his general Joab to participate in the murderous scheme. It took the lives of other valiant soldiers who were sent to die on the battlefield with Uriah. And when judgment was pronounced on David, the baby born in adultery died. Ten of his concubines were publicly sexually molested by his own son and forced into a state of secluded widowhood. And the sword of death took three more of his sons. But thank God for second chances. David got right with God, and we have his recorded words that reveal what true repentance is and the extent of God’s merciful forgiveness. There are many nuggets and nuances in this message, so order your CD today for a love gift of $10 or more for the radio ministry. Request offer SK206. Mail to Sound of Faith, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. Or go online to our e-store at soundoffaith.org, where MP3s are also available. But to order The Ripple Effect of David, send by mail. Send a minimum love gift of $10. Request SK206 to P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. Until next time, this is Sharon Ott saying, Maranatha.
