Date: June 15, 2016 ()

Bible Text: |

Series:

Have you ever been going along just great in your life and then blown it? And have you found you have done something so stupid, or so wrong, or so crazy that you think, what happened? You say, "What do I do about it? I have this big giant mess in my hands. What in the world do I do?" Maybe there were people around you, warning you, and saying, “You better think about it, you better not do that. I’m telling you. I do not know, but you need to consider some other things.” Or maybe you saw a train wreck coming and you could not keep yourself from being involved in it. Now that can happen in a wreck. Can it not? It can even happen in a car wreck. You can be going down the road, and it is icy, and you see cars skidding. And then you think, "Uh-oh, I am next." Bam! There you are and you have had a big wreck. That is the same way that people can do it in their lives. Sometimes they are just plain ignorant. Sometimes they are just plain determined and stubborn.  And sometimes, it just kind of happens out of the blue and they do not even know what hit them.

All temptation of any kind is common to man. You are not the first person to blow something in your life, to mess it up, to derail it, to stop it. There are three main areas where people generally blow it. One is morally. We see that happen all of the time. Lately we see it happening in America, in the government. It is people in high political offices and they have blown it – terribly. On their way to bigger and better things and they blew it. Now, why did they do it? Why did they blow it morally?  You think, “How could you have even thought that way?” What happened? Well, whether it is morally, financially, spiritually, a lot of times people get to thinking that they do not have to play by the rules. They think that they are just so special that everybody else has to play by the rules, but they do not. That the rules do not apply to them. Or they will deceive themselves and think, “Well, I know this is okay. Now, I know the Bible does not say this is okay.” Or maybe they do not even live by the Bible. They may just say, “Well, I know the law of the land says it is not okay, but I am different. I deserve this. I am better than this.” And so they blow it.

How do people blow it financially? At the time I am actually filming this series, we have had a big financial collapse in America and also globally. For the first time in the history of the world, we have had a global financial crisis. In America, you could think we had just gotten too caught up in buying things, and buying things on credit. We kept getting all of those credit cards in the mail. We would get in trouble and use one credit card to pay another credit card off. That kind of thing, and that is what happens. People are just crashing right and left. Businesses are failing. But it is not just here. It is all around the world. I watched a man from Ireland who was in the banking industry talk about this worldwide collapse. He said, “We saw it happen to Iceland. We saw Iceland completely crater financially with their banking system. So we decided when we saw people making a run on their money at our banks that we would guarantee billions of dollars and tell people, 'Do not get the money out of the bank. We will guarantee billions of dollars. The next thing that happened," he said, "People all over the European Union started taking money out of the banks that they were concerned were going to crater and started sending it to Ireland.  It over loaded everything. And now Ireland is in trouble again." And so, it is everywhere. The Bible says that in the last days, we will become globally united, and you can see it financially.  It also says in the last days that there will be a one-world system of money. You can see why that would come about. That is blowing it financially.

How do you blow it spiritually? There are a lot of ways. Getting involved in something in which God did not tell you to get involved.  Leaving something you should not have left. Getting involved in an immoral way and yet you are a spiritual leader. Not handling the finances right in your spiritual situation, maybe your church or a ministry. (Look at this picture. Actually there are three pictures right here. Look at them. You see a judge, a man, and a woman and they are all there being judged about what to do.) So, you see, temptation comes usually when you are not doing what you should be doing, and you get sidetracked, or sidelined. Something else takes over your attention. That thing that you have been keeping your mind on all this time, watching out for it, you suddenly get distracted and you allow your mind to wander in other ways, whether it is morally, financially, or spiritually. In the Bible, probably the best example of that is either King David or Sampson.

At the time that King David had this affair with Bathsheba, he was probably in his late forties or early fifties. Maybe he was going through a midlife crisis. There is a real strong chance it could be that. Because when men go through a midlife crises, they suddenly feel like they have not accomplished everything that they should have. They need something new and exciting, and they begin to look around. So many times, good men crash and burn right there. That is what happened with David. For all we know, it was really God’s plan for Solomon to be born, to be the wisest king that ever was, and for Bathsheba to be his mother, and David to be his father, and to come down through the genealogy of Ruth and Boaz and Rahab. For all we know, Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband might have been killed in war, and David would have been able to marry her legitimately, with honor and dignity. Who knows? Who knows the future? All we know is that David should have been at war with his men, because it says in 2 Samuel 11:1-2 “In the spring of the year when kings normally go out to war, David sent Joab and the Israelite army to fight the Ammonites. They destroyed the Ammonite army and laid siege to the city of Rabah.  However, David stayed behind in Jerusalem.” Late one afternoon, after his midday rest--notice this is the middle of the day, it is not even at night--late one afternoon, after his midday rest, David got out of bed and was walking on the roof of his palace. As he was looking out over the city, he noticed a woman of unusual beauty taking a bath. I always wonder what she was doing outside taking a bath where people could see her. Lots of things can happen to set you up, to have this situation where you blow it. Another way that we know that David is probably older is that he was taking a nap in the afternoon. You kind of have to get older to want to do that. Young guys do not do that very often.

The temptation to blow it will often come at the point of your greatest weakness. What is your greatest weakness? Have you ever identified it? You might have several, actually. It is a wise thing to know what they are. When the circumstances begin to set up like they do when you usually blow it; you can be very careful, slow down, pray a lot, wait and get advice. Wait for God to give you the encouragement that it is the right thing to do.

What can be points of weaknesses that set you up? One can be your emotions. I see that a lot in women and I can see it in men too. Maybe in men, it might be temper. There are men that are really good businessmen, but they have a really bad temper and it can just blow everything. People will start running to avoid them. People do not want to work with them. But with women, it can be sadness, depression, loneliness, not feeling loved or appreciated, and it sets you up. It can be money.  It can be self-gratification. Taking care of the pain in your life through drugs and alcohol instead of going to God and saying, “Lord I am really struggling and I need your wisdom and I need your help.” Instead, you go to that weakness and you blow it one more time: setting yourself up for failure all over again.

Having the wrong friend can be a point of weakness for a lot of people. It could be friends who lead you to crime.  It also can be friends who lead you to gross materialism or wrong priorities.  Wrong friends can also pull you away from your family or pull you away from God.

Pride can be the thing that causes you to blow it. I know one thing and you know it too, because we see it everywhere in the news--sin causes people to blaspheme God. If you are a person who has taken a stand for God, the Devil is always looking for a way to use you to blaspheme God. Why? Satan hates God and if he can get one of his kids to mess up, to blow it, he can get back at God. You know how you are as a parent. You can handle your things, but if somebody goes after your child or hurts your child, it is like double hurt for you, is it not? And that can happen.

When you blow it you show contempt for God’s word, because you are a Christian. You may love God, love His word and you want to walk with Him.  You may want to know how to walk with Him better. And yet, you show contempt for God’s word. I see that happening with people. It is like, “Oh, I love Jesus, I love Jesus.  Whoops, this did not work out, I am not happy, I am out of here. Bye." And they just leave this huge mess behind them. You have to be really careful in those situations that your emotions do not take control. You have to say, "No, wait a minute. I have to think this out and I have got to be careful, because this is an opportunity for the devil to blaspheme God. It is an opportunity for me to look bad, to really ruin what I have so carefully worked for." Look at this second scripture. This is what God sent a prophet to tell the king. This is powerful. It is 2 Samuel 12:14. “Nevertheless, because you have shown utter contempt for the Lord by doing this, your child will die.” This is David who wrote the Psalms. I love those Psalms; do you not love them? They can reveal my heart in ways I cannot even think of the words to say. Remember David was a man after God’s own heart. And yet, the prophet says in this verse, “You have shown utter contempt for the Lord.” If you are going to make up your mind to serve the Lord, and you really mean it, then you are going to have to realize that there are going to be times when you do not want to do it. You want to do what you want to do, and yet you are not going to be able to do it. You need to make up your mind now. Even if it is hard say, "Lord, I am going to do it the way you want it done."

Another thing that causes people to blow it is being deceived by dishonest people.  Maybe you are blind to something you ought to be able to see. It may be that you know something that you ought not to do and you do it anyway because you want to do it. If God looked at you and said, “Why did you do that,” you would get real squirmy and you would have to say, “Because I wanted to, that is why.” That is the way King David was. If God had gone straight to King David himself, David would have had to say, “I wanted her. That is why I did it. I am the king. I think I can have anything I want. I've got a lot of wives. I just wanted her.” But God fixed him, did He not? She got pregnant.  They had not planned on that happening.

Right before you are about to blow it, God will send you warnings. We do not have anything in the Bible that shows us that David was warned, "Be careful, something is coming," but He does do that. God does not want you to fail. He does not want you to blow it. He wants you to succeed. The Bible is full of “I want you to prosper. I want you to do well. I want you to do great things.” Look in your life. If you are feeling, right now, a temptation that could possibly blow everything in your life, look and see.  Has God been sending you warnings? Has He been talking just to you in your heart, saying, “Do not do this, you are sinking that way, watch out, stay away.” Is He doing that?  David probably just planned to just sleep with Bathsheba. Who knows what else he had really planned to do?  He probably saw her, wanted her, and it was going to be a one-time thing. Instead, it got so much worse. She sent him word, "I am pregnant, and it is not my husband's, because he is off fighting the war." Then David blows it even more, because he thinks, "What am I going to do now? I have got to get Uriah to die so that I will have a legitimate reason to marry her." So he calls Uriah in. He is trying to fix his own fix. Not repenting. Not saying, “God,  I am horrified at what I have done. Tell me what to do and I will do anything you tell me to do to correct it." No, he started trying to cover up where nobody would know, because, remember, nobody even knew this was going on besides David and Bathsheba – and God.  Uriah was out fighting in the war, and he brought him in. He thought, “Well, I will just bring him in, and maybe he will sleep with his wife and then maybe Uriah will think she is pregnant by him." “No,” Uriah said, “I am not going to do that.” They had a rule at that time that when a man was actually in battle he did not sleep with his wife even if he came home. So, Uriah slept in another place – near David. There is David, in a mess again. What is he going to do now? He thinks, and then he tells Joab, “Send him out, put him on the front lines.” That is just like saying, "Send him out there, put him on the front lines, because I know he will get killed." And he did get killed.

David tried to cover that up and blew it more than ever. Then what happened? He still thought, “I have blown it up and nobody knows it.” But, you see, God can tell anybody what you have done. He can tell anybody, and you cannot stop it from happening either. So, what happened? Nathan the prophet, the man of God, had God say to him, “This is what has happened.” He told him everything. That is the word of knowledge, operating in the Old Testament. He knew what happened. Then God said, “Go and tell David this story.” So Nathan went in and said, “I have a story to tell you.” And sometimes when you have blown it, and you are in denial, or you are in rebellion, and you do not want to hear it just right in your face, sometimes, like in David’s case, you can hear a story and it makes the point every bit as great. Nathan said, “There was a man and he did not have very much, and he had this little lamb. He loved that little lamb. He let that little lamb eat off his plate, let it drink out of his cup. He treated it like one of his children. He loved that little lamb. There was a rich man, and he had everything; all the sheep he could ever want, money and everything. He had a guest coming. He decided that he needed to feed that man. He took the poor man’s lamb and killed it and fed it. Now what do you think about a man like that, King?” And King David said, “Well, he ought to be killed. That is terrible.”  Nathan the prophet, in a very brave manner, said, “You are that man.” You know, that’s how it is when you blow it, it can blow up in your face. And David was horrified. Horrified. He fasted, he prayed. But finally, David did the thing that he should have done in the very first place when he blew it. He went to God. If you read Psalms 51:4 he said, “Lord against you and you only have I sinned. I am so sorry.” He knew that everybody would know what happened. There was not going be a way to keep it a secret. It would be chewed all over the kingdom. God’s name would be drug through the mud, David’s name would be drug through the mud. Bathsheba’s name would be drug through the mud. He could have avoided it after he made his first mistake. He could have avoided it by not even blowing it (in the first place).

Look at this third scripture: 1 Corinthians 10:12-13. “If you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall. The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience, and God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out, so that you can endure.”  Whether we know it or not, God had shown David a way out, so that he could endure that temptation. But he did not take it and look what happened.

What do you do when you have blown it and it hits you right in the face?  Do you say, "I have done it. I know I have done it, I cannot run, there is no place to hide. What do I do?” The first thing you do is get very honest with yourself, with other people, and with God. Admit it. Do not deny it. And do not make it less than it really is. Just say, “I did it. I did it.” Admit your deception, admit your rebellion, admit your grief, admit your pride. Nowadays, it is so hard for a person to say, “I was wrong, I did that.” It is so hard. However, there is something about walking with God that just by doing this one thing, it begins to turn things around for you with God. God knows you did it. And God is in charge of everything. When you just say, “I did it. I am so sorry.” God will begin to show you ways to handle it right then.  That is the beginning of how to get it all started going in the right direction when you have blown it. You have to say exactly what you did and you have to take full responsibility. It is so easy to want to blame everybody else. But you had your part in it, and you take full responsibility for your part. Then you had better do "carpet time" with God. I do not know what you call it. But it is not this, “Oh gee, God, I am so sorry I did that.” It is where with tears, anguish, pain, grief, you realize what you have done, and you, you repent to God and say, “Against you, and you only have I sinned.” If someone watching this show and you have murdered someone, and you know it, and no one else knows it, except God, you just go ahead and admit it to God and then say, tell me what to do. Because God expects you to make amends, make corrections, make apologies. But let him show you how and when to do that.

There will be consequences. When you blow it, there are consequences. There are always consequences. However, you have a faithful God, and He will help you through that, even if it is almost unbearable. The Bible says in James, “Be careful if you are a teacher not to do wrong, because your punishment will be greater than anybody’s.” As long as you are going to have to go through it, ask God to show you everything you can learn from it, teach you everything and then go on with your life. You can still do great things for God.

Look at this fourth scripture, 2 Samuel 12:24. “Then David comforted Bathsheba his wife, slept with her, she became pregnant, gave birth to a son, and they named him Solomon. The Lord loved the child." So, forgive yourself. You will live through this, even though you do not think you will right now. You can go on and do great things for God. Your greatest days may be ahead of you yet. Just remember God understands that we are human. He does not excuse sin. Not at all. But he will help you when you blow it. He will help you. He wants to help you. It is not over until you have drawn your last breath. From Genesis to Revelation, it is all about redemption. God is the Redeemer.

QUIET TIME QUESTIONS

1.  What are the three main areas where people blow it?
2.  Select another Bible character, describe how they blew it and how they made it right with God.
3.  Identify what happens right before you blow it.
4.  How can you prevent blowing it?
5.  Identify the weaknesses that leave you vulnerable to blow it?
6.  What are the steps to follow after you have blown it?

Download Files Notes

Topics: