By Rod Johnson

For this essay I’d like to talk about something really fun – sin! But then I want to immediately get into something even more fun and that’s finding forgiveness from your sin when you discover that the consequences outweigh the temporary pleasures.

The title of this essay is “Cause and Effect, or ‘The Truth about Consequences.’”

Sin is fun. Otherwise we wouldn’t have such a problem with it. As I’ve heard my pastor and others say, “If Satan were to say, "I’d like for you to indulge yourself carnally for a while but afterward you will become miserable and dirty and then to top it all off you’ll get to come suffer an existence of torment in hell with me forever,” I don’t think he would get too many takers. So sin has to be appealing. That’s just another word for tempting. But the happiness you find in it is fleeting and, if you are a believer, it takes real effort to remain in a state of unconfessed sin. You have to work hard to tune out the Holy Spirit working in your life to bring an awareness of your sin and assurance of just how much more joyful the alternative – a right relationship with God – is.

Here's a quote from the Bible. “I have found David a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.”

But consider this was also written about David. “Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites."

Hard to imagine, but these two seemingly incompatible descriptions were about the same person!

Any serious reader of the Bible (or even many who don't actually read it but hear the stories secondhand from their pastors) knows the account of David and Bathsheba. David really wanted Bathsheba - I mean really wanted her! Only problem was she was married. So David, being the honorable man he was, decided she was off-limits. But, he thought, she would be fair game if she were - a widow? So in his convoluted logic he attempted to make things okay by arranging for her husband to be killed in battle. And in his mind I'm sure the king rationalized it by telling himself that he hadn't actually killed Uriah. So true. He had only ordered the soldier to be put in a position so that his chances of being killed in battle were, say, about 100%.

Regardless of who we are and how devoted to God we are, when we get lazy and comfortable we are easy prey for the one who walks around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.

Some time later the prophet Nathan told King David a story about a rich man with unlimited resources taking a small lamb from a poor man for whom the lamb was his only thing of value. Nathan asked what should be done to the man. David said something that roughly paraphrases, "Off with his head," to which Nathan replied, finger pointing, "You are that man!" Can't you imagine that David was momentarily stunned by the analogy? He probably had the audacity to actually be surprised at the discovery of his state of sin. But only for a moment.

When confronted by Nathan, David was filled with remorse and wrote the 51st Psalm soon afterward. Here is a portion of that great account of the king’s repentance and his begging of God to forgive him.

"Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit. Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee." – Psalm 51:10-13 (KJV)

As we indulge in sin there are always consequences. And as we are confronted with our sin there are more consequences. We can look at this Psalm as it pours out the heart of a broken man and see just what those consequences are.

1. An impure heart – David asks for a pure one.

One of the first casualties of sin is an impure heart. And I know you are thinking “well, duh,” But what I am talking about is the impact that unconfessed sin has on our receptiveness to other sin. When we harbor sin there are only two things we can do: confess it or rationalize and learn to live with it. When we choose the latter we make our hearts open vessels to all manner of filth.

2. An improper spirit – David asks for his spirit to be renewed.

When our hearts become impure, we must find a way to deal with God. Again, we must confess our sin or live with it. If we choose to live with it then we must harden our spirits against the attempts by the Holy Spirit to convict us of them. It’s like a computer firewall. The result is that our way of approaching everything becomes to resist the presence of God in almost all ways, whether they relate to the unconfessed sin – which has no doubt multiplied – or not. If we don’t resist God in all areas of our lives, we run the risk of letting Him in to make us feel His convicting power and messing up the sin we don’t want to turn loose of.

3. A fear of separation – David pleads, "Cast me not away from your presence, take not your Holy Spirit from me."

So when we harden our spirits against God’s spirit we are on our own. God will not inhabit the daily life of a willing sinner. So until we confess our sin, our prayers aren’t answered and our communication with God is broken. God will never leave us but that doesn’t mean He will participate fully in our lives. One of the most horrible feelings in the world is when you realize that you are cut off from fellowship with Him. But the good news is that such a realization generally only happens when your heart is beginning to open to repentance.

4. Loss of joy – David begs, "Restore to me ... joy."

Often we confuse happiness for joy but they are not the same. It’s possible to be happy in our sin if we become so involved with it that we’re desensitized to it. I suspect David had reached a point that he was in such denial that he thought he was happy and that even when things weren’t going well, he didn’t have the spiritual awareness to attribute the problems to his sin. Psalm 51:8 says, "Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.” David seems to be blaming God for the absence of joy and in a way God is responsible for the crushed bones because He will let you bear the consequences of sin alone until you repent and ask for help. And the weight of your sin will absolutely crush the joy right out of you.

5. A loss of mission – David speaks about his life after being cleansed, "then will I teach..."

There are a lot of Christians that are harboring unconfessed sin and come to church regularly. I’ve done it and if you are honest most of you will have to admit to doing it, too. The amazing thing is that Satan is just fine with that. That’s because though we are in church we are not going to be Bible readers, prayer warriors, or witnesses. Our spiritual condition prevents it. In fact, one of Satan’s best tools is to expose the sins of believers so that we will be labeled as hypocrites and our witness marginalized.

Remarkably, it is often only when we are confronted by our sin that the realization of our situation sinks in. In other words, when we are saturated with sin we do not understand just how sorry a state we are in. Otherwise we’d get out! David’s sin was so familiar and so comfortable to him that when Nathan told him his story about the sheep, David seems to have been genuinely shocked to discover that it was about him

But…

David recognized the truth and he pled for restoration and received it. The fact that our hearts are not pure doesn’t mean that they can never be pure again. Earlier in this Psalm David says, “Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.” – Ps 51:7

And it’s clear from later Psalms and accounts of David’s life that he again felt God’s presence and that he also felt joy. God never left him; David just didn’t feel his presence.

But his rediscovered joy was not necessarily an earthly, emotional joy. God certainly forgives a repentant person but there are often lasting consequences of our sins.

Here’s some more of what Nathan said to David in 2 Samuel

• “… the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me…”

• “Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity upon you.”

But though the consequences of sin may last on this earth, God is faithful. When David confessed his sin, Nathan also said, “The LORD has taken away your sin. You are not going to die.”

So what are the lessons here?

First, God hates sin and if it’s possible that He hate it in degrees, He most likely hates it more in the life of one of His children than in the life of an unbeliever. But regardless of who commits it, God’s displeasure with sin brings judgment.

Secondly, God will forgive even the most heinous sin. We’re the ones who rank sin. For God it’s all the same – a falling short of His standard. I think that “degrees” of sin often result in more lasting consequences so that we may have to deal with related issues for a longer period of time but the “big” sins are no more difficult for God to forgive and cleanse us from than the “little” sins.

Thirdly, God’s love and forgiveness are not lessened by the fact that we got ourselves into a particular mess. When you get right down to it sin is always something that only we can do to ourselves.

And lastly, we can still have joy after sin. Are we going to be happy all the time? No. Repercussions of sustained sin may last for a long time after it is confessed and cause great unhappiness in ourselves and others. The Zondervan Bible Commentary says that joy is more than an emotional expression; it is a contented resting in God. When we are aware of our position with God and are armed with the whole armor of God we are less likely to sin. But when we do sin God will receive a penitent heart into His daily rest and restore our joy.

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit. Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee. – Psalm 51:10-13