Lesson 348: “The Second Look"
Billy Graham said about David; “It was not the first look that led to sin. It was the second”! David was a warrior and spent his youth and young adult days fighting for his life. At a very young age he kept his father’s sheep and killed a lion and a bear to rescue the stolen sheep (1 Sam. 17:34-35) and as a teenager he killed the giant (1 Sam. 17:45-51). Soon after David slew Goliath, King Saul became jealous of the young warrior’s fame and spent the next fifteen years trying to kill him. David not only warded off the king’s murderous attempts but built an army, winning battles wherever he ventured. “David found strength in the Lord his God” (1 Sam. 30:6).
Now Saul is dead and David is King and after two decades of constant fighting his kingdom is secure. No one left to conquer! Nothing left to prove! No one to run from or fear! And now he is bored! “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” (2 Sam. 11:1). Staying in Jerusalem was not David’s downfall! Seeing Bathsheba was a “chance happening” and not a sin! Sending a messenger to bring the bathing-beauty to him for a closer look, the second look, led David into a series of sins.
The “second look sin” pulled David into his second sin, adultery and then into yet another sin of having Bathsheba’s husband killed (2 Sam. 11:17). This is our second look at Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah the Hittite. Recall when David was a fugitive on the run from Saul in the wilderness? A group of friends gathered around and became known as “David’s Mighty Men”. They risked their lives repeatedly to save David and one of these men was Uriah (1 Chro. 11:41). Uriah was not “just another foot soldier” but a man to whom the king owed his life. In one “second look” David broke five of the Ten Commandments. He coveted his trusted body guard’s wife (# 10), stole her (# 8), committed adultery (# 7), murdered Uriah (# 6) and lied to cover it all up (# 9). All Ten Commandments found in Exodus 20:1-17.
Do you think the man after God’s own heart and the man that fell into a deep pit of sin deserves a second look? He wrote 75% of the praise and worship psalms including the words “I desire to do you will, O my God! Your Law is within my heart” (Ps. 40:8). If the author of the psalms and the sin infested man are one and the same and he represents all of us then perhaps we need to take a second look at ourselves. “Sin crouches at our door” (Gen. 4:7) and “the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10). Taking a second look at something “sinfully beautiful” is giving the devil a foothold (Eph. 4:27). “Submit yourselves then to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). “Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God (James 4:4) so please do not take that second look that most always leads to sin or in Mrs. Lot’s case, a pillar of salt (Gen. 19:26).