Honoring the Sexual Line: Nov. 18, 2007
David_M 10 Ken Shigematsu
Title: Honoring the Sexual Line
Text: 2 Samuel 11
Big Idea: We can find ourselves on the sexual “edge” if we feel above the rules, self-pity, alone, bored, or in need of validation. We can get off the “edge” through friendship and expressing our sexuality in health ways.
Many of us have likely observed a couple who are happily married with a couple of children. The husband feels that their life together is good, but he feels “stuck” in an existence which is dominated by paying down the mortgage, saving for retirement and putting away what he can for his kids education. He ends up meeting a woman at work who makes him feel young again and energized… and one thing leads to another and he has an affair.
A woman finds herself in a fairly good marriage has a few children, but there’s a part of her that feels trapped. She got married right out of undergrad and had kids right away and she feels like she missed out on a lot of the “fun” of life. With some her friends, she starts doing girls night out at the casino just for fun… but a half 10 months later she finds herself anteing up the money that her family needs for grocery money on a poker table.
People can make decisions without being fully aware of where those decisions will lead them--of how much those choices will hurt themselves and their loved ones, and turn the ship of their life toward a different course.
In many cases, a person wishes they could rewind the DVD of their lives and not have entered into a liaison with that person (as attractive as he or she may be). He or she wishes they had not starting to gamble or experiment with cocaine.
People who make these kinds of choices are usually not marginal losers. Many of these people are successful. They are, by all indicators, what we would call “good people.” And yet they end up violating their code, dishonouring God, hurting their loved ones, and doing damage to their own soul. How does it happen?
By looking at the famous story of David and his affair with Bathsheba, we are going to explore a part of this question this morning.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to 2 Samuel 11: 1, and we are going to read to verse 5. This experience for David is considered to be the major turning point in his life. This is his “before and after” episode.
David and Bathsheba
1 In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.
2 One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, 3 and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite." 4 Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness.) Then she went back home. 5 The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, "I am pregnant."
At the time of this story David is about 50 years old. He has had a distinguished record as king of Israel for some 20 years. He is known as a man with a heart after God, as a passionate worshipper of God, as formidable warrior, as an outstanding leader of his people. David has these dazzling qualities, yet he has a catastrophic fall. What were the factors that made him vulnerable?
David, as we just noted, was a very successful as a leader. In the chapters preceding this story we see he’s led his armies in great military victories. He was a hero. David is very successful and when a person is very successful it’s not uncommon for that person to feel like they are “above the rules”. They can develop a sense of entitlement and feel that, even if they “break the rules,” they won’t face the consequences because they are, after all, above the rules as the “favored” son or daughter.
David was successful, and he was also in a position of very prominent leadership. Part of the “package” of significant leadership includes suffering. Leadership is a kind of contact sport where you are going to get hit, where you’re going to bleed… There is a certain level of pain that every leader absorbs. Because of this, a leader can begin to experience self-pity and feel that they deserve some kind of special “treat”… It may have been that though David was very blessed in his leadership, there was a part of him that also felt sorry for himself because all the burdens he had to carry as the king of Israel and felt he was entitled to some special treat.
David was also isolated and bored. The text tells us…
1 In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army… But David remained in Jerusalem…
It was springtime in Israel, and in David’s day Israel and her neighbors didn’t have the kind of standing professional armies we have today. Their armies were composed of farmers, merchants, regular folks. Every able-bodied man went off to war. Because the winter was just too wet, and muddy to mobilize your army efficiently, spring was the time when people, in David’s day, went to war. It was spring and David should have been with his troops heading off to battle, but instead David is at home and in bed. With all the men gone, David is isolated from his colleagues doesn’t have much to do and he’s bored, he’s restless, and he can’t sleep… He gets out of bed and walks around the roof of his palace. He is ripe for temptation.
While no-one is above temptation, there are times when we are more vulnerable to temptation than other times. As was the case with David, one of those times we’re on the “edge” is when for whatever reason (perhaps because we’re successful at something) we begin to feel that the “rules don’t apply to us.” Another time when we are especially vulnerable to temptation is when we feel self-pity. We feel that things haven’t gone for us in life the way they ought to have gone, so we think we deserve some special treat. A third time when we may find ourselves on the “edge” is when we are isolated and lonely, bored and restless….
Is there a time when you are especially prone to temptation, especially on the edge?
David is restless. He can’t sleep. He gets up walks around the roof of his palace, and from the roof he sees a woman bathing. And the woman is described as being very beautiful. David sends someone to find out about her. The man said, “She is Bathsheba … the wife of Uriah, the Hittite.” Uriah, the Hittite, is part of David’s circle of 30-40 soldiers and man outstanding integrity. He’s is a good friend of David’s (they have dinner and drink together). But, David sends one of his servants to get her. She comes to him and he slept with her. And she becomes pregnant because of this.
Scholars Robert Alter and Walter Brueggemann point out that this is the turning point in the life of David—marking the “before and after” period. I am not going to go into great detail as to what happens as a result of this (please read the following chapters for yourself), but David tries to cover up his sin, ends up murdering his friend Uriah so he can marry his wife. As a result, the seeds of destruction are sewn into his family (as we’ll see on a later Sunday). His eldest son, and therefore the heir apparent to the throne--who is surely influenced by the fact that his father has obviously not been able to bridle his lust--ends up raping his half sister Tamar. Things get really ugly for David and his family as a result of his affair. Affairs have a track record of ending disastrously.
Let me now talk about a person who is more of contemporary who had a very similar experience. This person was also happened to be in his 50s. He had a lot of power. He was a leader over many people. Like David, he had been very successful, but also suffered from the “burden” of leadership. As his close aides have noted, he is a person who by nature, is easily bored and restless. Who am I talking about? I am talking about Bill Clinton.
As Harvard professors of leadership Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky chronicle in their book Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading, Clinton enters the presidency with a great deal of excitement, but half way through his first term, the Republicans gain control of the Congress and Clinton’s power begins to ebb away. Toward the end of 1995, he tries a last-ditch, high-stakes political gamble to regain influence. He engages Republicans in a game of “chicken,” and ends up closing down the government. The government shuts down in November of 1995. The Clinton Administration staff, allies, and confidants, who serve to keep him disciplined, cannot come to work. So, after a year of experiencing an extreme low in his presidency, Clinton finds himself without the daily anchoring of colleagues in the Whitehouse. His primary confidant, his wife Hilary, happens to be out of town. To keep things functioning in the Whitehouse, they bring interns to work in the Oval Office. And in this environment, where Clinton has the burden of holding the government together without his staff and without the support of his wife, he becomes very vulnerable to the temptation.
Clinton is man who experienced great success in the past, so he may feel that he is above the rules. He has the burden of trying hold with government together without his staff. He’s alone and lonely and restless by nature. When a man (or woman) whether in leadership or not feel that the rules don’t apply to him, or feels like he’s suffering in some way, and alone (lacking intimacy), and he’s restless he’s is in a very, vulnerable situation… he is on the edge… Clinton ends making a choice to have an affair Monica Lewinsky, a choice that ends up hurting himself, his wife, daughter, all those close to him and Lewinsky herself.
Like David, Clinton was on the edge.
Let’s go back to the David story for a moment and try to imagine what things may have been like from Bathsheba’s perspective.
The text doesn’t describe what Bathsheba is thinking or feeling. We know that David’s passion causes him to move very quickly. We also know that, in this culture, if a man with David’s power summoned Bathsheba, he could simply through that summoning coerce her to sleep with him. But Robert Alter, the gifted, Hebrew, literary scholar, observes that, in verse 4, that while David does summon Bathsheba, there is enough ambiguity in the Hebrew grammatical structure to suggest that perhaps there was some element of active participation on Bathsheba’s part in response to David’s invitation. We don’t know what was going on in Bathsheba’s mind in this experience, she speak only three words in the story “I am pregnant.” So this is simply conjecture. We do know that Bathsheba must have been lonely with her husband away at battle. We do now that David was a respected, attractive man. So, perhaps (and this is simply conjecture on my part) Bathsheba felt conflicted, conflicted about being forced to break her marriage vows, violate her code, but perhaps she also felt flattered by the attention of a special man.
If we go back to the more contemporary parable of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, we do know that Monica Lewinsky felt that her self-worth would be enhanced or confirmed by being with someone who was “special.” Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky, in their book, Leadership on the Line, point out that if Monica Lewinsky had run into Bill Clinton at the grocery store and he wasn’t the President of the United States, but just had some ordinary job, she probably would have regarded Clinton as another slightly, over-weight, middle-aged man with grey hair looking for burgers to grill. But because he was President, because he was someone “special” being with him she felt would make her feel special.
A man (and a woman too) can be tempted, on the “edge” because he feels like he’s the above the rules, self-pity (he’s suffering in someway), isolated and lonely (there’s a lack of intimacy in his life), or bored (there is not enough adventure). These factors can make a man vulnerable to crossing a sexually boundary that will hurt him and the woman that he crosses it with.
And, a woman, who is lonely or who needs validation can be very vulnerable when she is with a man that she regards as being special. Maybe he has some special role in her life as a boss, a mentor, a teacher, a spiritual guide. Maybe she regards him as special and attractive (ironically) because he seems to be such a faithful husband to his wife and great father to his kids. And then, when he, in turn, pays attention to her, she feels special, validated, affirmed, more fully human. She feels, at a conscious or subconscious level, that if she is just with this man, she is going to become more whole. But, if she engages cross sexual boundary with that man, as Monica Lewinsky discovered, and so many others have discovered, she will not experience healing, but alienation from herself, and an even greater sense of loneliness after the affair is over.
Sin offers fraudulent promise. Sins promises to fill us, but ends up leaving us more empty than before (use paper cup with hole). There may be some initial excitement and pleasure and kick, but after the initial excitement, pleasure and diminishes, sin leaves a person more lonely, more hurt, more disconnected from themselves and God than they were before.
So, how can we guard our boundary…
So that we honor God, honor the design of own soul, our loved ones and even the potential partner who may want the affair, but will end up hurt by it?
In both the David and Clinton’s situations, we see that they fell at a time when their friends and their confidants were not with them. When we are isolated, we are vulnerable. When we don’t have strong friends to speak into our life, we are vulnerable.
The messenger who responded to David’s inquiry about Bathsheba, told David she is Bathsheba, wife of Uriah, the Hittite, but because that relationship, didn’t have enough weight in David’s life, David was not able to heed that warning.
As I have shared before, when I was a younger single person before entering into so-called “Christian ministry” I was on a trip, and ended up meeting a woman who worked as a model doing some semi-nude Calvin Kleinesque ads. We ended up really connecting and one night she showed up at my hotel lobby at around midnight, wanting to show me some photographs of her. I remembered just talking to her on the phone from my room and she wanted to come up to my room. I had a bad feeling about it, but also remember being in this state of confusion. You know how in Las Vegas they pump extra oxygen into the casinos so you feel more awake at 2:00 a.m. and you feel like you can keep playing poker. I felt the oxygen was being pumped of my hotel room as I feeling confused… I was on the edge. By God’s grace and the help of good hotel staff, she didn’t make it up to my room.
Afterwards, when I got home, a friend of mine said, “If you ever in such a situation again, call me.” All of us can experience times when the air gets thin for us and we lose our sense of judgment and our sense of perspective, times when we’re on the edge. One of the best ways to regain it is to have a friend who can speak the truth to us with enough force that we hear it. I have those kind of friends. I need those friends. Without those friends, I would not be a pastor--I’d would crashed and burned long ago.
What helped turn David’s life around after the affair and get back on track with God? It was his friend, Nathan. Nathan was a pastor of David’s but also his friend. As we see in the next chapter, Nathan does a great service for David in speaking the truth boldly to him and moving him toward repentance.
In this series, we have talked quite a bit about friendship. David Bentall was here, speaking about friendship earlier this year. He talked about covenant friends, if you weren’t here download it from our website. It would be hard to over estimate the power of a friend in our spiritual journey.
Be a friend. Get a friendship who will help you stay in Christ stay on God’s code for you.
Also connect with your sexuality in ways that are healthy. Connect deeply with your partner if you are married, or if you are in a dating relationship that honours God. If that is not part of your life, or even if it is, connect with your sexuality in other ways by experiencing healthy intimacy with God, friends, family (if they are around), beauty in nature, sports, in art or music (if that is something that resonates with you) through the exercise of your creative gifts, by serving, by bringing life to others… The more you can experience “eros”, your sexual creative, life-giving energy in healthy ways that are part of God’s design, the less vulnerable you will be to the kinds of temptations that will hurt your relationship with yourself, with God, the people in your life.
“If our soul is satisfied in healthy ways—the less likely we are to fall.” A dissatisfied soul makes sin look awfully attractive
In closing, if you are living in sexual purity… cherish that gift… whether you’ve always been pure, or whether have committed to sexual purity since you’ve committed your life to Christ.
If you are on the edge, get help. You may not be in a full-blown affair, but if you are married and find yourself exposing more of your heart and mind to a colleague at work or someone you are not married more than to your own spouse (or vice verse) you’re on the edge. If you find you’re have lunches with someone that you’re telling your spouse about (and you’re not don’t undercover for the RCMP or the FBI) you’re on the edge. If sharing openly intimate details about your martial problems with some else or some one is with you—you’re on the edge. Get help either from a strong trusted friend who shares your code or professional counselor who “code” you trust.
If you’re in an affair: break it off. Yes, despite the pain, break it off. There not that many things I can say are categorically God’s for you. I can say it’s categorically God’s will for you to break off an affair.
And then, finally, if you have had an affair, or if you have sinned in some other way, I want you to know that God is a God of sovereign grace, and he can take our sins and mistakes and weave them as part of his larger and beautiful plan for our lives.
Look at David--he committed adultery, theft, murder, hypocrisy of the worst kind. Here we are 3000 later… learning from a man—who in balance—God calls a man after his own heart.
There’s great pain and collateral damage that comes out of this situation, but God also redeems: it is one of Bathsheba’s sons (her first son dies, but another son), Solomon who ends up being David’s successor. He becomes king, chosen by God to be king and builder of the temple… and the writer of the book of Proverbs in the Bible.
So, good does come out of this story that is marked by a lot of pain and tragedy.
My professor Haddon Robinson used to say that God causes roses to grow out of manure piles. God can bring beautiful things out of the mess and the crap of our lives. So know that there is hope.
Pray…
Next week, Darrell Johnson will be speaking from Psalm 51, a Psalm of repentance, forgiveness and hope…
Benediction…
No unto him to who able to keep
May the God of peace…
(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio)
Title: Honoring the Sexual Line
Text: 2 Samuel 11
Big Idea: We can find ourselves on the sexual “edge” if we feel above the rules, self-pity, alone, bored, or in need of validation. We can get off the “edge” through friendship and expressing our sexuality in health ways.
Many of us have likely observed a couple who are happily married with a couple of children. The husband feels that their life together is good, but he feels “stuck” in an existence which is dominated by paying down the mortgage, saving for retirement and putting away what he can for his kids education. He ends up meeting a woman at work who makes him feel young again and energized… and one thing leads to another and he has an affair.
A woman finds herself in a fairly good marriage has a few children, but there’s a part of her that feels trapped. She got married right out of undergrad and had kids right away and she feels like she missed out on a lot of the “fun” of life. With some her friends, she starts doing girls night out at the casino just for fun… but a half 10 months later she finds herself anteing up the money that her family needs for grocery money on a poker table.
People can make decisions without being fully aware of where those decisions will lead them--of how much those choices will hurt themselves and their loved ones, and turn the ship of their life toward a different course.
In many cases, a person wishes they could rewind the DVD of their lives and not have entered into a liaison with that person (as attractive as he or she may be). He or she wishes they had not starting to gamble or experiment with cocaine.
People who make these kinds of choices are usually not marginal losers. Many of these people are successful. They are, by all indicators, what we would call “good people.” And yet they end up violating their code, dishonouring God, hurting their loved ones, and doing damage to their own soul. How does it happen?
By looking at the famous story of David and his affair with Bathsheba, we are going to explore a part of this question this morning.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to 2 Samuel 11: 1, and we are going to read to verse 5. This experience for David is considered to be the major turning point in his life. This is his “before and after” episode.
David and Bathsheba
1 In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.
2 One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, 3 and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite." 4 Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness.) Then she went back home. 5 The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, "I am pregnant."
At the time of this story David is about 50 years old. He has had a distinguished record as king of Israel for some 20 years. He is known as a man with a heart after God, as a passionate worshipper of God, as formidable warrior, as an outstanding leader of his people. David has these dazzling qualities, yet he has a catastrophic fall. What were the factors that made him vulnerable?
David, as we just noted, was a very successful as a leader. In the chapters preceding this story we see he’s led his armies in great military victories. He was a hero. David is very successful and when a person is very successful it’s not uncommon for that person to feel like they are “above the rules”. They can develop a sense of entitlement and feel that, even if they “break the rules,” they won’t face the consequences because they are, after all, above the rules as the “favored” son or daughter.
David was successful, and he was also in a position of very prominent leadership. Part of the “package” of significant leadership includes suffering. Leadership is a kind of contact sport where you are going to get hit, where you’re going to bleed… There is a certain level of pain that every leader absorbs. Because of this, a leader can begin to experience self-pity and feel that they deserve some kind of special “treat”… It may have been that though David was very blessed in his leadership, there was a part of him that also felt sorry for himself because all the burdens he had to carry as the king of Israel and felt he was entitled to some special treat.
David was also isolated and bored. The text tells us…
1 In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army… But David remained in Jerusalem…
It was springtime in Israel, and in David’s day Israel and her neighbors didn’t have the kind of standing professional armies we have today. Their armies were composed of farmers, merchants, regular folks. Every able-bodied man went off to war. Because the winter was just too wet, and muddy to mobilize your army efficiently, spring was the time when people, in David’s day, went to war. It was spring and David should have been with his troops heading off to battle, but instead David is at home and in bed. With all the men gone, David is isolated from his colleagues doesn’t have much to do and he’s bored, he’s restless, and he can’t sleep… He gets out of bed and walks around the roof of his palace. He is ripe for temptation.
While no-one is above temptation, there are times when we are more vulnerable to temptation than other times. As was the case with David, one of those times we’re on the “edge” is when for whatever reason (perhaps because we’re successful at something) we begin to feel that the “rules don’t apply to us.” Another time when we are especially vulnerable to temptation is when we feel self-pity. We feel that things haven’t gone for us in life the way they ought to have gone, so we think we deserve some special treat. A third time when we may find ourselves on the “edge” is when we are isolated and lonely, bored and restless….
Is there a time when you are especially prone to temptation, especially on the edge?
David is restless. He can’t sleep. He gets up walks around the roof of his palace, and from the roof he sees a woman bathing. And the woman is described as being very beautiful. David sends someone to find out about her. The man said, “She is Bathsheba … the wife of Uriah, the Hittite.” Uriah, the Hittite, is part of David’s circle of 30-40 soldiers and man outstanding integrity. He’s is a good friend of David’s (they have dinner and drink together). But, David sends one of his servants to get her. She comes to him and he slept with her. And she becomes pregnant because of this.
Scholars Robert Alter and Walter Brueggemann point out that this is the turning point in the life of David—marking the “before and after” period. I am not going to go into great detail as to what happens as a result of this (please read the following chapters for yourself), but David tries to cover up his sin, ends up murdering his friend Uriah so he can marry his wife. As a result, the seeds of destruction are sewn into his family (as we’ll see on a later Sunday). His eldest son, and therefore the heir apparent to the throne--who is surely influenced by the fact that his father has obviously not been able to bridle his lust--ends up raping his half sister Tamar. Things get really ugly for David and his family as a result of his affair. Affairs have a track record of ending disastrously.
Let me now talk about a person who is more of contemporary who had a very similar experience. This person was also happened to be in his 50s. He had a lot of power. He was a leader over many people. Like David, he had been very successful, but also suffered from the “burden” of leadership. As his close aides have noted, he is a person who by nature, is easily bored and restless. Who am I talking about? I am talking about Bill Clinton.
As Harvard professors of leadership Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky chronicle in their book Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading, Clinton enters the presidency with a great deal of excitement, but half way through his first term, the Republicans gain control of the Congress and Clinton’s power begins to ebb away. Toward the end of 1995, he tries a last-ditch, high-stakes political gamble to regain influence. He engages Republicans in a game of “chicken,” and ends up closing down the government. The government shuts down in November of 1995. The Clinton Administration staff, allies, and confidants, who serve to keep him disciplined, cannot come to work. So, after a year of experiencing an extreme low in his presidency, Clinton finds himself without the daily anchoring of colleagues in the Whitehouse. His primary confidant, his wife Hilary, happens to be out of town. To keep things functioning in the Whitehouse, they bring interns to work in the Oval Office. And in this environment, where Clinton has the burden of holding the government together without his staff and without the support of his wife, he becomes very vulnerable to the temptation.
Clinton is man who experienced great success in the past, so he may feel that he is above the rules. He has the burden of trying hold with government together without his staff. He’s alone and lonely and restless by nature. When a man (or woman) whether in leadership or not feel that the rules don’t apply to him, or feels like he’s suffering in some way, and alone (lacking intimacy), and he’s restless he’s is in a very, vulnerable situation… he is on the edge… Clinton ends making a choice to have an affair Monica Lewinsky, a choice that ends up hurting himself, his wife, daughter, all those close to him and Lewinsky herself.
Like David, Clinton was on the edge.
Let’s go back to the David story for a moment and try to imagine what things may have been like from Bathsheba’s perspective.
The text doesn’t describe what Bathsheba is thinking or feeling. We know that David’s passion causes him to move very quickly. We also know that, in this culture, if a man with David’s power summoned Bathsheba, he could simply through that summoning coerce her to sleep with him. But Robert Alter, the gifted, Hebrew, literary scholar, observes that, in verse 4, that while David does summon Bathsheba, there is enough ambiguity in the Hebrew grammatical structure to suggest that perhaps there was some element of active participation on Bathsheba’s part in response to David’s invitation. We don’t know what was going on in Bathsheba’s mind in this experience, she speak only three words in the story “I am pregnant.” So this is simply conjecture. We do know that Bathsheba must have been lonely with her husband away at battle. We do now that David was a respected, attractive man. So, perhaps (and this is simply conjecture on my part) Bathsheba felt conflicted, conflicted about being forced to break her marriage vows, violate her code, but perhaps she also felt flattered by the attention of a special man.
If we go back to the more contemporary parable of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, we do know that Monica Lewinsky felt that her self-worth would be enhanced or confirmed by being with someone who was “special.” Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky, in their book, Leadership on the Line, point out that if Monica Lewinsky had run into Bill Clinton at the grocery store and he wasn’t the President of the United States, but just had some ordinary job, she probably would have regarded Clinton as another slightly, over-weight, middle-aged man with grey hair looking for burgers to grill. But because he was President, because he was someone “special” being with him she felt would make her feel special.
A man (and a woman too) can be tempted, on the “edge” because he feels like he’s the above the rules, self-pity (he’s suffering in someway), isolated and lonely (there’s a lack of intimacy in his life), or bored (there is not enough adventure). These factors can make a man vulnerable to crossing a sexually boundary that will hurt him and the woman that he crosses it with.
And, a woman, who is lonely or who needs validation can be very vulnerable when she is with a man that she regards as being special. Maybe he has some special role in her life as a boss, a mentor, a teacher, a spiritual guide. Maybe she regards him as special and attractive (ironically) because he seems to be such a faithful husband to his wife and great father to his kids. And then, when he, in turn, pays attention to her, she feels special, validated, affirmed, more fully human. She feels, at a conscious or subconscious level, that if she is just with this man, she is going to become more whole. But, if she engages cross sexual boundary with that man, as Monica Lewinsky discovered, and so many others have discovered, she will not experience healing, but alienation from herself, and an even greater sense of loneliness after the affair is over.
Sin offers fraudulent promise. Sins promises to fill us, but ends up leaving us more empty than before (use paper cup with hole). There may be some initial excitement and pleasure and kick, but after the initial excitement, pleasure and diminishes, sin leaves a person more lonely, more hurt, more disconnected from themselves and God than they were before.
So, how can we guard our boundary…
So that we honor God, honor the design of own soul, our loved ones and even the potential partner who may want the affair, but will end up hurt by it?
In both the David and Clinton’s situations, we see that they fell at a time when their friends and their confidants were not with them. When we are isolated, we are vulnerable. When we don’t have strong friends to speak into our life, we are vulnerable.
The messenger who responded to David’s inquiry about Bathsheba, told David she is Bathsheba, wife of Uriah, the Hittite, but because that relationship, didn’t have enough weight in David’s life, David was not able to heed that warning.
As I have shared before, when I was a younger single person before entering into so-called “Christian ministry” I was on a trip, and ended up meeting a woman who worked as a model doing some semi-nude Calvin Kleinesque ads. We ended up really connecting and one night she showed up at my hotel lobby at around midnight, wanting to show me some photographs of her. I remembered just talking to her on the phone from my room and she wanted to come up to my room. I had a bad feeling about it, but also remember being in this state of confusion. You know how in Las Vegas they pump extra oxygen into the casinos so you feel more awake at 2:00 a.m. and you feel like you can keep playing poker. I felt the oxygen was being pumped of my hotel room as I feeling confused… I was on the edge. By God’s grace and the help of good hotel staff, she didn’t make it up to my room.
Afterwards, when I got home, a friend of mine said, “If you ever in such a situation again, call me.” All of us can experience times when the air gets thin for us and we lose our sense of judgment and our sense of perspective, times when we’re on the edge. One of the best ways to regain it is to have a friend who can speak the truth to us with enough force that we hear it. I have those kind of friends. I need those friends. Without those friends, I would not be a pastor--I’d would crashed and burned long ago.
What helped turn David’s life around after the affair and get back on track with God? It was his friend, Nathan. Nathan was a pastor of David’s but also his friend. As we see in the next chapter, Nathan does a great service for David in speaking the truth boldly to him and moving him toward repentance.
In this series, we have talked quite a bit about friendship. David Bentall was here, speaking about friendship earlier this year. He talked about covenant friends, if you weren’t here download it from our website. It would be hard to over estimate the power of a friend in our spiritual journey.
Be a friend. Get a friendship who will help you stay in Christ stay on God’s code for you.
Also connect with your sexuality in ways that are healthy. Connect deeply with your partner if you are married, or if you are in a dating relationship that honours God. If that is not part of your life, or even if it is, connect with your sexuality in other ways by experiencing healthy intimacy with God, friends, family (if they are around), beauty in nature, sports, in art or music (if that is something that resonates with you) through the exercise of your creative gifts, by serving, by bringing life to others… The more you can experience “eros”, your sexual creative, life-giving energy in healthy ways that are part of God’s design, the less vulnerable you will be to the kinds of temptations that will hurt your relationship with yourself, with God, the people in your life.
“If our soul is satisfied in healthy ways—the less likely we are to fall.” A dissatisfied soul makes sin look awfully attractive
In closing, if you are living in sexual purity… cherish that gift… whether you’ve always been pure, or whether have committed to sexual purity since you’ve committed your life to Christ.
If you are on the edge, get help. You may not be in a full-blown affair, but if you are married and find yourself exposing more of your heart and mind to a colleague at work or someone you are not married more than to your own spouse (or vice verse) you’re on the edge. If you find you’re have lunches with someone that you’re telling your spouse about (and you’re not don’t undercover for the RCMP or the FBI) you’re on the edge. If sharing openly intimate details about your martial problems with some else or some one is with you—you’re on the edge. Get help either from a strong trusted friend who shares your code or professional counselor who “code” you trust.
If you’re in an affair: break it off. Yes, despite the pain, break it off. There not that many things I can say are categorically God’s for you. I can say it’s categorically God’s will for you to break off an affair.
And then, finally, if you have had an affair, or if you have sinned in some other way, I want you to know that God is a God of sovereign grace, and he can take our sins and mistakes and weave them as part of his larger and beautiful plan for our lives.
Look at David--he committed adultery, theft, murder, hypocrisy of the worst kind. Here we are 3000 later… learning from a man—who in balance—God calls a man after his own heart.
There’s great pain and collateral damage that comes out of this situation, but God also redeems: it is one of Bathsheba’s sons (her first son dies, but another son), Solomon who ends up being David’s successor. He becomes king, chosen by God to be king and builder of the temple… and the writer of the book of Proverbs in the Bible.
So, good does come out of this story that is marked by a lot of pain and tragedy.
My professor Haddon Robinson used to say that God causes roses to grow out of manure piles. God can bring beautiful things out of the mess and the crap of our lives. So know that there is hope.
Pray…
Next week, Darrell Johnson will be speaking from Psalm 51, a Psalm of repentance, forgiveness and hope…
Benediction…
No unto him to who able to keep
May the God of peace…
(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio)
posted by Shigematsu at 10:55 AM
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