Oh man, Crossing family. It is so good to be with you.
It is Thanksgiving week and I am thankful for you and all the
incredible work that God is doing all across this region.
I want to welcome those of you joining out of different
locations, those of you watching online and those of you who are
part of The Crossing inside. Got to meet with a couple Friday
night who brought a report of what's happening at the Crossing
inside in Vandalia. Not all of the people who I'm
about to mention go to our church, but some of them do.
They had over 40 baptisms this past week in Vandalia.
Isn't that incredible? I don't know how many of those
are going to be crossing ones, but the fact that God's moving
is great. I am getting ready to go
celebrate Thanksgiving with my family.
It's like the Hensel holiday. When you marry into the family,
you have to forego Thanksgiving with your family.
That's just part of the deal. But you get every other holiday,
so you can go see your mom on, you know, 4th of July and
Christmas and all the other ones.
But for the Thanksgiving belongs to the Hensels and it's going to
be an epic celebration. I'm just telling you, we went to
Sam's Club. I don't like to brag, but we
have a membership and I picked up 3 turkeys, 12 racks of ribs,
2 briskets and 120 pieces of chicken.
So I'm going to be wheeled in here sometime next week, but I'm
I'm leaving today, not coming back till a week from today and
I cannot wait to go. My boys are there right now
riding 4 Wheelers trying to get their mom to buy camo.
It's a redneck holiday and we love it.
Now, we've been in this series Handle with Care, and it's been
talking about your heart. And there's this tagline that I
probably should have done a little bit better job of
highlighting because it's incredibly important to what
we're going to be talking about today.
If you look at this graphic, it's really good graphic, great
job. But right here it says this
getting your heart right before it's too late, That if we don't
get our hearts right now, it might be too late later.
There are things that every single one of us are putting
off, things that we know we're supposed to do, things we're
supposed to own, behaviors that are supposed to change.
And as Christians, we need to get our hearts right before it's
too late. And people who don't have an
intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ, we're so glad
that you're here. But I need you to know it's
important that you get your heart right before it's too
late. Now you got to be honest with
you. Some of you, you probably
brought a friend today and like, you should come to church.
It's going to be great. And because everybody could use
a little bit of hope, this sermon is not one of those
sermons that you walk away going.
So glad I came to church today because I'm going to take us
down a dark road to the dark places in our heart.
The parts of our heart that we don't talk about.
The parts of our heart that we maybe haven't turned over to
Jesus. The parts of our heart that
maybe we haven't even owned ourselves.
But I think if we do it right, we'll be better for it.
Because today what I want to talk to you about is this.
A heart that ignores God, causes harm.
There were a couple of kids in junior high and high school that
were pretty rough on me. There was one, we'll call him
Timmy. And he had a crew of people.
And while I was pretty sure that I could beat Timmy up when he
was mean to me, I didn't believe that I could handle all of the
people that he ran with. Then there was this other kid.
We'll call him, or what I call the first one, Timmy.
OK, We'll call this one Tommy. And it seems like every day
Tommy would look for a way to inflict pain.
The most significant was I was getting a a drink of water.
And when you're my size, a water fountain's down by your knees.
And so I'm bending all the way over like this.
And he came over and he smashed my head down on the metal.
Whatever thing that comes out, this piece, you put my head on
it. And I remember getting ready to
go to bed at night, and it was just always weighing on my mind,
How am I going to navigate Timmy and Tommy tomorrow?
And I would get proud of myself because I never retaliated.
I never lost my anger. And it was kind of like a badge
of honor, You know, Timmy and Tommy, they're just really bad
kids. And then there's me, you know,
heart just dedicated to the Lord.
However, there was this kid in my class, we'll call him Bob,
And in my school we all gathered in the cafeteria before school
started and they had round tables where eight chairs could
be placed around them and we would pack in 10 to 12 people
around there every day before school started.
And Brian would always be outside the circle.
And the moment somebody would get up, Brian would like, just
appear desperate to be included. He wanted to have his own friend
group. He wanted to have people to make
memories with, but he was always on the outside.
And then one night, me and a couple of my friends, we decided
to invite him to come hang out with us and he showed up in his
dad's work truck at my parents house and we started messing
around. And I'm one of those people that
when I get spun up, I'm pretty hard to slow down.
Some of you guys, you've heard me like in a sermon say
something I shouldn't have said. And you're like, yeah, well when
he gets spun up, you know he's an idiot.
He's our idiot, but he's an idiot.
But when I get spun up, I'm pretty hard to slow down.
And so we all piled up into his dad's work truck and he was
driving and we got him to go down the drive and we took a
right. And then about 1/4 of a mile we
got him to take a left and we got to drive through this little
gate. And then we got him to start
driving down the train tracks. And then after we were
sufficiently down the train tracks in his dad's work truck,
we pulled out a mag flashlight in the rear and made it look
like a train was coming in the rearview mirror.
And we set off an air horn and then we all acted a fool and
pretend like we were incredibly scared for our lives.
And he was in a position where he was trying to figure out how
does he navigate an incoming train in his dad's work truck
where there's no place to turn around.
And you can imagine all of the drama unfolding in that.
And then how do you navigate those pressures when you're in
high schoolers? Not well.
And so the decisions you make to correct the position you're in
are not ideal. And then we took the liberty of
the chaos to act even more a fool.
And we we messed up his dad's truck.
We messed up the interior, the exterior and we messed up him
and after we were done it was real quiet and he drove back to
my parents house up the hill and said would you guys please get
out? And he drove home.
That night, as I laid in bed, I realized I had been to Bob what
Tommy and Timmy had been to me. Every single one of us.
We have a spiritual enemy. He is trying hard to limit your
impact, to rob you of your purpose, to dim your
evangelistic light, to 'cause you pain, destroy your
relationships and your reputation.
You hear me talk about this all the time.
I love pointing to this first John 1010.
This is Jesus talking the thief that Satan comes only to steal
and kill and destroy Jesus. I have come that they may have
life and have it to the full. Every single one of you.
Satan is looking for opportunities to steal, to kill,
to destroy. What I want to do is I want us
to take a look at David's life. And my hope is by looking at
this particular story, you will recognize the harm that you have
caused, that I have caused and do our best to avoid it in the
future. It starts off innocently enough.
Second Samuel, Chapter 11, verse one in this 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. The story starts off with David
not doing what he was supposed to be doing.
He wasn't doing something he wasn't supposed to do.
He wasn't doing a bad thing. He just wasn't doing the thing
he should have been doing at a time when kings go off to war.
King David stayed home. He stayed behind.
David had lost sight of his role.
His purpose? His mission as a king.
And since it's David as a warrior king, he should have
been leading the charge in battle.
But instead he stayed back. Maybe he was giving himself a
pass. Maybe he was riding himself a
permission slip. We've all been there.
He's going, guys. I've earned it.
I've deserved it. No, I mean, after all, remember
Goliath? You guys just held back and I
went out there all by myself. You go on this battle, I'll stay
behind. Have we ever done that?
Have you ever done that? It's somebody else's turn.
You write yourself a permission slip.
It's not that big of one, but it's just enough.
And this time, somebody else can serve in the ministry.
Somebody else can set up for the event.
Somebody else can lead the small group.
Somebody else can. At the time when kings go out to
war, somebody else can go. But that was all that Satan
needed in David's life. Just a little bit of space, just
a little bit of entitlement. Just a little permission slip.
Satan wants to get his foot in the door so he can take the
whole house. Look what it says in First Peter
chapter 5. Be alert and of sober mind.
Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion
looking for someone to devour. Resist him standing firm in the
faith because you know that the family of believers throughout
the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings he's saying.
Stand your guard, be alert. Satan is always attacking and if
you can give him just a little bit of room, he'll take the
whole room. Now watch how this snowballs in
David's life into a much bigger issue, because Satan can take
small drifts in your faith and use them to cause major
disasters and destruction. Verse 21 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 and David sent someone to find out
about her. The man said she is Bathsheba,
the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.
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. The woman conceived and sent
word to David saying I am pregnant.
The only reason David sees Bathsheba is he's not where he's
supposed to be doing what he's supposed to be doing at a time
when kings go out to war. David remained in Jerusalem and
he's walking on the roof and he's sees her.
He may have seen her before, but there were men in the house
before. There were men there to protect,
to object. But those men are off to war.
He sends to find out about her. And they come back and they tell
us three things about her. She has a name, she has a
father, she has a husband, She's someone's daughter.
She is someone's wife. The painful truth is the people
that you and I have sinned against have a father and a
mother and a sister and a brother who are carrying around
a broken heart To those you are being mean to bullying, watching
when you consume porn, gossiping, body shaming.
Hear me? There are tears that have soaked
the floor of their house because of our actions.
I wonder what it was like when Bob got the phone call to come
hang out with us. Did his mom finally feel like
the son that she was hoping would have relational
connections? All those prayers were finally
coming true. I wonder if his dad was like,
take the nice truck. I wonder if they were going.
He's not going to be alone anymore.
And then he came home. If you're wondered if the people
you're mean to harsh to, condescending to, are your
interactions with them making them a better wife or a worse,
1A better father or a worse one. And it's sad that we act on our
best behavior around people we don't care about and we take it
out on the people we care about the most.
And so parents and and kids deal with someone who's in so much
pain because of the pain that we have caused them.
The reason David felt like he could invite her over was
because her husband was off to war.
Her husband was doing what he was supposed to be doing, and
David was not doing what he was supposed to do.
That little bit of space, that little bit of entitlement.
Well, when it's all over now, there's a baby.
A woman who was more than likely forced to have sex against her
will with someone powerful now has to deal with a baby that
does not belong to her husband. The joy of being pregnant is
overshadowed by the logistics of what do I do now?
How's her husband going to feel when she comes home?
How is the community going to respond to her?
Verse 6 So David sent this word to Joab.
Send me Uriah the Hittite, and Joab sent him to David.
When Uriah came to him, David asked him how Joab was, how the
soldiers were, and how the war was going.
David's asking these questions because at the time when kings
go out to war, David stayed in Jerusalem.
Let's keep going. 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. You guys are going to fall in
love with Uriah. But Uriah slept at the entrance
to the palace with all of his master's servants and did not go
down to his house. You're going?
Why'd he do that? Check this out.
David was told Uriah did not go home, so he asked Uriah, haven't
you just come from a military campaign?
Why didn't you go home? He tells him.
Uriah said to David. The Ark and Israel and Judah are
staying in the tents, and my commander Joab and my Lord's men
are camped in the open country. How could I go to my house and
eat and drink and Make Love to my wife as surely as you live?
I will not do such a thing. 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.
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. Uriah is just such a bad to the
bone, dude. David is trying to execute a
carefully crafted cover up campaign.
It's a full blown damage control.
He brings her husband home and he sends him to spend the night
with her so that way he'll think that the kid belongs to him.
But he doesn't. He has too much integrity to
write himself a permission slip. All of the men that I serve with
are sleeping in the open country, living in tents and you
want me to go home to my wife? Can't do it.
Sleep on the steps of the palace.
David's like, are you kidding me?
Look at the contrast between him and David at the time when kings
go out to war. David stays home.
Uriah comes home, gets a permission slip from David to go
home to his wife and said can't turn it in.
Now think even deeper here, David.
You know this is trying to get Uriah to think that the baby is
his, but what he's also doing is he is introducing a lie into the
marriage, because Bathsheba will know that it's not forcing her
to live with a lie in her own marriage.
Imagine Bathsheba if the plan had worked.
Watching Uriah playing baseball in the backyard and coming in
before dinner and going boy, he He throws just like me and her,
knowing. No, he doesn't.
Watching Uriah go and work incredibly hard to provide a
better future for his children, For his child, knowing that the
future he's working for isn't actually his, that doesn't work.
So David goes, all right, obviously I can't compete with
this man when he's sober minded, so I'm going to bite him over
and I'm just going to keep pouring drinks until I get him
drunk. But Uriah, even when he is
drunk, doesn't give up on his plan.
David is trying to use all of his power to turn everybody
around him into puppets and his cover up.
However, Uriah, even when he is in a drunken state, will not
break his commitment to his fellow soldiers.
And you know this, if David was in his right mind, he would have
loved this about Uriah. He would have been like my dog.
You're just too bad that the bone won't come inside, won't
sleep with your wife. You're not coming home till the
men come home. My man David would love this
about him. But when you're trying to cover
up sin, somebody with integrity is hard to deal with.
For David, because he's in cover up mode, because he's sinning,
everything changes. You see things differently.
Up becomes down, Left becomes right.
Integrity becomes inconvenient. So what does David do?
Well, verse 14 in the morning, David wrote a letter to Joab and
sent it with Uriah in it. He wrote, put Uriah out in
front, where the fighting is fiercest, then withdraw from him
so he will be struck down and die.
His two previous attempts to cover up his sin have been
unsuccessful, so now he takes matters even further and he goes
down an even darker alley to a place that nobody in their right
mind would go. He sends Uriah with his own
death sentence to the commander of the army, and David knew that
he wouldn't read it because of how Uriah had been upright in
his dealings with him so far. Verse 16.
So while Joab had the city under siege, he put Uriah at a place
where he knew the strongest defenders were.
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.
David has now gone from being one who lusts to one who commits
adultery, to one who tries to conceal sin through deception,
to getting someone drunk, to now having someone killed.
Verse 26 When Uriah's wife heard that her husband was dead, she
mourned for him. 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. Look at the harm that David's
sin has caused. He took advantage of a woman
while her husband was away fighting.
He ends up murdering the husband of this child's mother.
And then he loses the respect of Joab, his army commander.
Imagine being Joab, being commissioned to go out and fight
the war. Lead the charge on David's
behalf. He'd heard stories of David's
conquests. He grew up with him, with a
poster of David on his wall. He was his hero.
I mean, people have written songs about David's conquests.
Saul has killed thousands, but David his ten thousands.
And now Joab gets to be a leader in that guy's army, only to read
a letter about having Uriah, the Hittite killed.
There's a tough truth we have to swallow here.
A heart led by desire leads you down roads you never wanted to
walk and turns you into someone you never thought you would be.
You end up doing things you thought you would never do.
And then, because your heart is not turned towards God and
filled with the Holy Spirit, you come up with all kinds of
solutions in your flesh. And so you go deeper and deeper
down the road, turn after turn, dark alley after dark, alley,
until when you find yourself looking in the mirror, you no
longer recognize who you are. Some of you, you've started this
innocently enough. The decisions you made at the
moment weren't all that bad. But over time, the compounding
interest, the snowball effects, they've taken you into the
darkest of places. What started out on Instagram is
now taking you to Pornhub. What started out on Snapchat is
now taking you to cutting in self harm.
What started off as a joke now turned into bullying and body
shaming. And you find yourself with a
life you never thought you'd have to live, making choices you
never thought you'd have to make.
I'm asking that you give me grace here for just a second
because I am not trying to be condescending or make light of
anybody who would put themselves in this category right now.
I just want to make a bigger point in a second.
Right now it is fashionable in our culture for everybody to be
a victim. Everybody dawns the victim
identity, and it is an incredible identity because it
allows you to write yourself an awful lot of permission slips
and it allows you to assign blame to a lot of people, just
not you. It allows you to bypass the
consequences of your own decisions.
It allows you to frame, make a mental framework for how to
process all of the adversity that life throws at you.
And so everybody is a victim. They aren't as wealthy as they
were supposed to be, and their parents weren't as nice as they
were supposed to be. Now let me be clear before I get
any emails. Hear me.
Hear me.
I am in ministry. We have an incredible team of
people who do ministry at this church, and we know that there
are way too many of you who have been victims of Absolute
horrible circumstances. And I am not trying to discount
that at all. I'm just asking you to push a
little bit further. Push past the attention of being
the victim. Push past the pity that you get
from being the victim, and ask yourself a darker, deeper,
tougher question. Am I also an abuser?
Am I also a bully? Am I also the one who has power
over some people, and I'm using it to step on them even though
Jesus died for them? You see, last week, David was
the victim who needed to figure out how to forgive Saul.
But in this sermon, David is the abuser, and Uriah and Bathsheba
are the victims. In the last sermon, you and I,
we were the victims that needed to learn how to forgive.
But in this sermon, we're the abusers who need to repent.
I'm not asking you to look at this sermon through the eyes of
Bathsheba, the victim. I'm asking you to look at this
story through the eyes of David the abuser.
Because if we spend our whole lives allowing ourselves to just
be the victim, we will fail to recognize all the people that we
have hurt, all of the people that we are hurting.
Who are the people in your life that are in pain right now
because of you? Because of how you treated them?
Because of how you treat them? How many people got a bad view
of Jesus? Because we have the audacity to
call ourselves Christians, but we acted more like the ones who
crucified Jesus? Who are the people in your
sphere who you've lied to, gossiped about, shamed, abused,
spoke hurtful words, reacted, became violent?
How have you treated your parents, your kids?
How have you treated people who have less than you, people that
struggle more than you? But the thing David had done,
displeased the Lord, is not just a verse about David, it's a
verse about me. The things that Clayton had done
displeased the Lord. We're not always the victim.
Sometimes we're the abuser and what we have done displeases the
Lord. It breaks his heart.
We end up stepping on the very people that Jesus came to save.
We end up pushing away the very people that Jesus is trying to
pursue. We end up hurting the very
people that Jesus came to heal. We end up shaming the very
people that Jesus came to save. So I was in ministry when I was
in Macomb and I could not shake the events of that night.
And our church was launching campuses and I didn't grow up
too far from here. And I'm going, there might be a
day where we have a church in Fort Madison and you know, the
history of my life has kind of been you're either a really big
fan or you want to protest me. Like, I don't have a whole lot
of people that are in between. Like, I really don't know how I
feel about Clayton. People have an opinion and I'm
going when we go to Fort Madison, there's going to be
protesters. And I couldn't shake it.
I felt so much guilt over how I behaved that night that I tried
to track down Bob. And so 10 years plus, after this
night had occurred, I felt like I had to call him and own what I
did. And so I got his number and I
called him. I said, hey Bob, it's Clayton.
And like an idiot, I said, well, you might not remember, he said.
I remember. And I said, I'm a Christian, I'm
a pastor, and you didn't deserve what I did to you that night.
Nobody does. And I am so, so sorry.
And he gave me a gift I did not deserve, he said.
Ah, Clayton, I forgive you. Sometimes we're not just the
victim. Sometimes we're the bad person
in another person's story, and that impacts our ability to help
them find the one who changes everything.
And sometimes we carry around the weight of our sin and we
don't own it and we don't give it to Jesus.
And that is why an intimate, personal relationship with Jesus
Christ is so incredibly necessary.
And I hope you'll consider one as we move to a time of
decision. So normally I talk to those of
you who are here who don't have a relationship with Jesus yet,
and I just want to flip it up for just a second.
So, Christians, you know, you're used to tuning me out.
TuneIn for a second Christians in God's game plan.
You and I are supposed to be a city on a hill, a lamp on a
stand. People are supposed to take
notice of us. There's supposed to be something
different, a guiding light about us.
And I'm guessing that there are bits and pieces in your past.
Bits and pieces in your present where your behavior and your
actions have gotten in the way of God's plan to redeem the
world. And normally, you know, you guys
are really good. You know, when we get done with
the sermon, you guys love to get right with God, and a lot of you
will come to the steps and get down your knees and pray.
And you're going to have the opportunity to do that about
whatever you're going through and whatever you need to do.
But there might be some of you today that your response is you
need to call someone and you need to say, I'm sorry, you
don't need to justify it. Do you think it would have
mattered to him, to Bob, if I said, well, listen, man, you
know, Tommy and Timmy have just been really mean to me.
So the way I processed it was I just decided I'd be really mean
to you. So I just wanted you to know why
it happened. You think you'd be like, Oh,
well, thanks for clearing it up. I just needed to own my part.
And there might be nothing more powerful than them knowing that
Christians are just built different, that when we screw
up, we own it and we say we're sorry for it.
The great news is, Christians, hear me.
The Bible says that when we go to God and ask for forgiveness,
He is faithful and just to forgive us, that he will meet us
in that moment and bring about the healing that you and I
desperately need. So if you're a Christian, I'm
pushing you out of your comfort zone to go.
What kind of business do you need to do?
And more than likely, some of your business is not with God,
it's with people that God died for.
Now to those of you who don't have a relationship with Jesus
Christ, let me let me level with you here for a second.
You are in the process of hurting people every day as you
move through life, there are ripples going out and people are
navigating the pain that you cause, and you know it and you
see it. And you wish that you could put
Humpty Dumpty back together again, but you can't do that.
However, when you begin an intimate, personal relationship
with Jesus Christ, he not only makes you new, but he gives you
His Holy Spirit. And this Holy Spirit produces
fruit in your life. The kind of life, the kind of
fruit that the people around you desperately need and want and
allow you to make the difference that deep down, you know you
want to make. And I know for many of you, or
maybe just some of you, probably a very few of you, because most
of you are just better than me. When I preach A sermon like
this, you know exactly what it is in your life.
You know the memory. You know the story.
You know what it is. For 10 years I carried the story
of Bob around like a weight. This past summer we took you
through Romans, and in Romans chapter 5, verse eight, one of
the top five verses in all of Scripture, it says this while we
were still sinners. Christ died for us.
And the reason that verse is so meaningful to me is the worst I
have ever felt about me is the night I ruined Bob.
That was me at my lowest, darkest and I realized what I
was capable of. And if any of you had ever seen
me on that night, you would run from this place.
While Clayton was ruining Bob's life, Christ died for us.
That is why we're such big fans of Jesus and we proudly proclaim
the gospel, because when we were at our worst, our God was at his
best. And I tell you that.
So that way you know whatever it is that you are navigating right
now will not keep you from God unless you let it.
Because God is ready right here, right now to introduce the hope
and the healing and the forgiveness and the new life
that can only be found in Him. And if you'll take it, and
you'll place your life, your sin, your situation in His
hands, you won't regret it. And in just a moment, when I get
done praying, there's going to be people right over there by
the baptistery that would love a chance to talk with you so you
can find what we found in him. Would you guys stand with me?
God, I just want to see you move.
I want to see you move in hearts and lives.
God, I know there's pieces of us that we've turned over to you,
but there's also pieces of us that we're too afraid to talk
about and too afraid to let you in.
God, I'm praying that you'd give people the courage to trust you
with the darkest parts of who they are because they could see
that you're good and you're faithful and you redeem and you
restore and you can make things new.
So God, do a work in US right here, right now.
You're near my pray. Amen.