Introduction

Last week I talked about the road to compromise and the road to integrity. We are either on one or the other. David eventually walked the road to compromise. It started when he stayed home during battle time, when all the other men were gone. David was not where he should have been. He was home with the women. It was the wrong time for David to be home. He was feeling lonely. He was bored. And because he was lonely and bored—and perhaps feeling unappreciated—he went to his rooftop to view porn. He watched a woman bathe. He let every line drop. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong focus. He crossed boundaries, and he committed wrong actions. Another man's wife conceived his son. David didn't know what to do. He tried to get Uriah to come back from battle to be with his wife so that he could pawn it off. But Uriah wouldn't do it. So David ended up putting Uriah on the front lines of battle, and Uriah was killed.

David walked the road to compromise. He not only hurt himself, his family, Bathsheba, and Uriah; he hurt the entire nation. And what does he do? He just sits on it. For several months he allows it to fester inside of him. He describes it in Psalm 32 and in Psalm 38.

Finally, the prophet Nathan shows up and basically says: David, I need to talk to you. I need to tell you something that has happened in the kingdom. There is a rich man, who has all kinds of sheep and lambs, and there is a poor man, who only has one ewe lamb. This ewe lamb was his pet. It basically eats off of his table, drinks out of his bowl, and sleeps in his arms. The wealthy man had visitors coming into town, and he decided to cook a lamb for them. But instead of taking one of his own, he took the poor man's ...

Philip Griffin is the Senior Pastor of the Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin.