| This was the sermon for last Wednesday night 1-19-05. Please take time to read this. It is very helpful.
"The Snowball Effect of Sin"
Have any of you ever built a snowman before? Of course you have. But... How did you begin? You had to start with one small snowball. Then you gradually packed more onto it untill you had to roll it on the ground and you started to notice that everytime you rolled it around that it kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Well a lot of times that is exactly the way sin operates in our life. We allow something small to come into our life and we let sin take over and turn something small into something very big.
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See at first it starts off small and controllable. See satan is not going to put something on your hands at first that is too big and uncontrollable. Because if he did, what would we do? We would put it down and not mess with it. See that is how Satan decieves us. See it can be a problem that we may never know that it is a problem because satan has decieved us so much. But Satan gradually keeps adding sin to that problem and over time it just gradually gets bigger untill it gets to the point that it is so big that your life is out of control. Then you look back and say...how did i get here. Satan is here to decieve us. He is here to still, kill, and destroy you too. Believe me, this can happen to the best of us. Nobody is to good for Satan to decieve. If you have that attitude then he will decieve you just to show you that he can. Look what happend to "King David". Read...
2 Samuel 11
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, "Isn't this 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. (She had purified herself from her uncleanness.) Then she went back home. 5 The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, "I am pregnant."
6 So David sent this word to Joab: "Send me Uriah the Hittite." And Joab sent him to David. 7 When Uriah came to him, David asked him how Joab was, how the soldiers were and how the war was going. 8 Then David said to Uriah, "Go down to your house and wash your feet." So Uriah left the palace, and a gift from the king was sent after him. 9 But Uriah slept at the entrance to the palace with all his master's servants and did not go down to his house. 10When David was told, "Uriah did not go home," he asked him, "Haven't you just come from a distance? Why didn't you go home?" 11 Uriah said to David, "The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents, and my master Joab and my lord's men are camped in the open fields. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and lie with my wife? As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing!" 12 Then David said to him, "Stay here one more day, and tomorrow I will send you back." So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. 13 At David's invitation, he ate and drank with him, and David made him drunk. But in the evening Uriah went out to sleep on his mat among his master's servants; he did not go home.
14 In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. 15 In it he wrote, "Put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die." 16 So while Joab had the city under siege, he put Uriah at a place where he knew the strongest defenders were. 17 When the men of the city came out and fought against Joab, some of the men in David's army fell; moreover, Uriah the Hittite died. 18 Joab sent David a full account of the battle. 19 He instructed the messenger: "When you have finished giving the king this account of the battle, 20 the king's anger may flare up, and he may ask you, 'Why did you get so close to the city to fight? Didn't you know they would shoot arrows from the wall? 21 Who killed Abimelech son of Jerub-Besheth? Didn't a woman throw an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died in Thebez? Why did you get so close to the wall?' If he asks you this, then say to him, 'Also, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead.' "
22 The messenger set out, and when he arrived he told David everything Joab had sent him to say. 23 The messenger said to David, "The men overpowered us and came out against us in the open, but we drove them back to the entrance to the city gate. 24 Then the archers shot arrows at your servants from the wall, and some of the king's men died. Moreover, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead." 25 David told the messenger, "Say this to Joab: 'Don't let this upset you; the sword devours one as well as another. Press the attack against the city and destroy it.' Say this to encourage Joab." 26 When Uriah's wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him. 27 After the time of mourning was over, David had her brought to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing David had done displeased the LORD .
Man... Can you tell when his first snowball was created??? Did you see how Satan decieved David and his snowball got bigger and bigger untill it was out of control??? See God thought so much of David. David was pretty much a companion to God. See even someone so close to God can still mess up and be decieved. Here are 5 underlying truths about the snowball effect of sin...
1.) It always starts with a small compromise, and is usually discarded as a phase or fad.
2.) The person involved in the snowball always denies the increasing significance of the problem.
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Remember when David's messenger said to David when he saw her bathing: "isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" See even his messenger is trying to warn him, trying to get him not to do anything stupid. But i bet David's response was, "don't worry i have everything undercontrol. Im just going to get to know her. Thats it." We all do that.
3.) As the snowball gets bigger the influence of friends and family gets smaller.
4.) As the snowball gains size and momentum is is no longer fun, it is now an obligation.
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When David made the decision to have Bathsheba's husband killed this was no longer fun to David, he felt it was a requiremen because he had slept with his wife and she is pregnant with his kid. See David is saying to himself, "Im the King of Israel, what will all the people think when they find out that i have slept with a soilders wife while he was at war and got her pregnant and I had to her husband because i did not want him to find out or the word to get out." See when it got to this point, it was no fun at all. It was all fun and games when he was watching her bathing and had her sent to him and slept with her. It was fun then, but now that snowball has got so much bigger and look where it is now.
5.) When the snowball reaches it's breaking point there is always the same old question: "How Did I Let It Get This Bad!"
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David never thought whenever he first looked at her, that it would turn into something this drastic. I bet after all this had happend that David just sat in his chair with his head in his lap saying to himself, "How did i let it get this bad.  This is not supposed to be happening to me. Im better than that. Im the KIng." See, Satan can decieve anyone. There is no match for Satan but God. Without God, Satan will win everytime. Satan is more powerful than any of us can imagine and don't take that for granite. Respect how powerful Satan is by alwayse keeping God right by your side. Now im not saying Respect the devil. Im saying if you had a gun in your hand, you would not be waving it around. You would respect the power it has and be careful around it.
You may have stumbled while back and you still have not gotten out of that rut. You may have made a bad decision in your life, and you continue to allow it to distant you from God! You may have allowed something small into your life and it is quickly growing out of control. You need to know... that God is a God of forgiveness and restoration, not punishment, condemnation, and temptation! The same God that brought David out of the mess he was in is the same God that can help you out of you situations and problems. There is only one problem solver out there. That is God. Many times we always try to find things of the world to try to solve our problems and it may seem for a while that is has solved it but that is just Satan decieving us and that later it is still not solved. But soon as we find God and lay those problems at his feet and have faith that he will be with you and help you, the you feel such relief and fulfillment. So don't be so hard on your self if you mess up because God is always right there to help you up. All you have to do is just believe and have faith in God. This is all for now but please, really try to apply this to your life. You never know, you might have a friend out there that is going through a situation similar to this and you can make an impact on his life. Come join us this Sunday night at 6pm. God Bless and have a safe weekend.
In Christ's Love,
The Emerge Recruting Coordination Team
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