Allen Webster

Topic(s): Pain & Suffering, Sin

Sin is no plaything. First we toy with sin, and then sin toys with us. To begin with, we play master, and it plays slave; then we switch, and it doesn’t want to take turns anymore.

The prodigal boy in Jesus’ story is an exception (Luke 15). The truth is, most prodigals never come home. Oh, they think they will. They plan to . . . someday. They may even start back toward home . . . several times. But it’s a long way back. It’s embarrassing to admit you’ve been wrong. Sin’s entanglements are confusing to unravel. Bad habits are hard to break; bad friends are difficult to give up; bad reputations are hard to live down.

What happens to most prodigals? They enjoy the “pleasures of sin for a season” (Hebrews 11:25) and then marry someone from the far country. Somebody they met at a party or a bar. Somebody they “experimented with.” Somebody that never knew the Lord and doesn’t care much about knowing Him now (cf. 1 Samuel 2:12; cf. 3:7). On Sundays, they prefer the “lake” to the “Lord.” When it comes to reading, they prefer the day’s news to the Good News. They still drink a little (on the weekends), still smoke (a pack a day now), still use bad language (when they are “with the guys” or in a foul mood), still watch bad movies and . . . well, you get the picture. They’re still in the pigpen. It’s hard to leave.

Ask David.

His sin started as a Peeping Tom watching his next door neighbor take her bath (2 Samuel 11:2). He looked (she was beautiful), lusted (she was naked), sent for (it’s hard to say “no” to a king), and slept with her (11:4). That was about as long as he had planned to stay in “the far country” (a one- night excursion). Unfortunately, David found out that when he was through with sin, sin wasn’t through with him.

A few weeks later, he received an unwelcome note. It must have been tightly sealed with “King’s Eyes Only” scrawled on the envelope. It was probably spotted and smeared with tears. He opened it to read the four words he must have secretly dreaded ever since another man’s wife got out of his bed: “I am with child” (2 Samuel 11:5).

He was back on board the sin train—and it was going to keep him much longer than he wanted to stay. You know the downward spiral his life took from there. Deception. Hypocrisy. Conniving. Dishonor. Murder. Coverup. Quickie marriage (2 Samuel 11:6–27).

Ask David.

The next scene is God’s prophet paying the former shepherd a visit and telling a parable about a rich man, a poor man, and a pet lamb (2 Samuel 12:1–5). The poor man loved his lamb like it was his own child. He had kept it a long time. It ate at his table. The rich man killed it to feed to a passing guest.

Perhaps David (who thought this was a true story) thought of a pet lamb he had while he was growing up. His face flushed with anger, and he rendered this judicial decision: “He shall pay back fourfold” (12:6). Unwittingly, David had just pronounced his own sentence and rewritten the script for the last two decades of his life. The rest of David’s years read like a plot out of daytime television. Sin was about to take him for a long ride.

• Ask David how far sin will take you as he lies for a week in the dirt begging for the life of a dying baby.

• Ask him at three a.m. on the seventh day when he hasn’t slept or eaten (2 Samuel 12:16).

• Ask him again as he walks home from the burial (12:19).

• Ask him again later when he learns that his daughter has just been raped—while on an errand on which he sent her (2 Samuel 13:12–14).

• Ask him again when he finds out that one of his sons is the rapist. Put yourself in this father’s place “when king David heard of all these things” (2 Samuel 13:21).

• Ask him again when the message comes that his son had just been murdered—because David had sent him into harm’s way.

• Ask him again when he finds out that another son is the murderer (2 Samuel 13:30–34).

• Ask him again when he doesn’t see his own son’s face for five years.

• Ask him again as he flees his palace one night, barefoot and weeping, because that son is trying to kill him and take his kingdom (2 Samuel 15:30).

• Ask him again as he ducks flying rocks and flinches from cursing insults (2 Samuel 16:13).

• Ask him again when he—along with all Israel—hears that his son has slept with ten of David’s wives in a tent on top of the king’s palace (2 Samuel 16:22).

• Ask him again when his close friend betrays him and wants an opportunity to murder him (2 Samuel 17:1–2).

• Ask again between his sobs as he grieves that his beloved son is swinging from an oak by his hair with three darts through his heart (2 Samuel 18:14, 33).

Sin took David farther than he ever wanted to go.

How far is sin taking teens?

Have you witnessed the anger, sadness, depression, hatefulness, and hopelessness of a life Satan gives back after an extended stay in the far country?

• Have you looked into the vacant eyes of a young person who has been living a worldly lifestyle for several months?

• Have you been around the miserable pessimist who has lost faith in God and the Bible?

• Have you seen a youth robbed of innocence and purity?

• Have you sat with a teen who cries until she/he runs out of tears because the consequences of sin have become personal instead of theoretical?

• Have you been to rehab with a young person whose body has the “shakes” of withdrawal, the hollow eyes, the bloodless face, the wasted body?

• Have you attended a teen’s funeral whom sin took so far that he decided death by bullet or pills was better than life?

Solomon said, “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them” (Ecclesiastes 12:1). The far country will keep you longer than you want to stay—maybe even for eternity.