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Nov 09, 2025 06:00am

The Sneakiness of Sin

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“…the Lord considered what David had done to be evil.”

David—the warrior, a worship leader, the praise psalmist, and a shepherd—fell into sin. Grievous sin. And he didn’t just “fall” into it . . . he deliberately walked in it.

In the spring, when he should have marched out to war, he stayed behind. He saw a woman bathing. Instead of looking away, he continued to look, hatching up a plan to have her brought to him. Even though it didn’t appear to be an act of violence, God held the king responsible—not Bathsheba. She had no choice.

How does this happen to someone known as “a man after God’s own heart”?

I would like to suggest it wasn’t one big fall into sin. Instead, it can be a daily choice to blend the world’s living with God’s living. If we examine David’s story closely, we will begin to find traces of compromise from the beginning: For instance, David took many wives and had many children.

You see, David’s weakness was women . . . it was perhaps the one area he hadn’t surrendered to the Lord.

As easy as it is to shake my head at King David, I can’t throw stones at him. Though I have surrendered much to the Lord, I still have bad habits and faulty mindsets I know aren’t good for me, yet I don’t turn away from them. I compromise by living with them. And I don’t surrender them to the Lord.

Surrender would involve taking an inward look at my heart and understanding why I do what I do. I have to examine the root of what drives me in those areas . . . and it would involve hard work to combat those areas. But surrender is hard when I’ve chosen to live with them.

And this, friends, is the sneakiness of sin.

Once we open the door to sin, it continues to open wider with every nod we give and every moment we fail to take a stand against it. It opens wider the moment we compromise with it. Maybe it’s something accepted by the world (like kings having multiple wives), but God’s kingdom operates by different rules. He holds us to His standard, and if we aren’t proactively living life His way, we are backsliding into the world’s way.

The world tempts our eyes, a gateway to our hearts. Whether those things are our phones, TVs, places we go, or things we read, they all fall into this category. I have often heard it’s not the first look at something tempting . . . it’s the second time I look back at it—hook, line, sinker.

The world also tempts us through our ears, another gateway to our heart. Whether it’s the people you surround yourself with or the podcasts and music you are listening to, what we hear impacts what we think. People make deposits into us daily, and their words can deeply influence us.

Whatever we allow through our ears and our eyes affects what we think. The more we think about it, the more likely we are to do it. Oftentimes, like David, we don’t fall into one big act of sin; we have been entertaining it in our minds for a while. We have done some compromising with it, opening the door to it inch by inch.

And the enemy knows. He studies us all the time. He knows our pasts—our weaknesses, our sin struggles, and temptations. He knows our family’s past with sin. He knows our propensities. He knows what grabs our eyes when he puts it in front of us. He knows what we like to listen to. The enemy is crafty, and his temptations to sin are often sneaky, coming in the form of compromise. And just at the right time, he presents it to us, hoping we will take the bait.

Sometimes, God convicts us in creative ways (like the parable about the lamb the prophet Nathan told to David), but make no doubt: conviction does come. And thank God it does—it’s evidence we are His children. It’s God’s loving kindness when He shows us our sin; we turn to Him with a repentant heart, and He offers His forgiveness. It’s God’s grace and mercy that can lead us to His restoration in the midst of our sin. Conviction, friends, is beautiful and hard all at the same time.

And take hope, friend, that sometimes, our worst mistake can become our best mistake when we allow God to change us through it.

David’s mistake didn’t remove him from the throne, but there was a steep cost to his sin. There are consequences he must bear. The same goes for us, too, friends. But when we turn to God, He draws near. He removes our stony hearts of sin and gives us hearts of flesh—hearts that long to obey Him. He gives us the spiritual strength to face it and overcome it. God gave David’s heart a little CPR, prompting repentance and the words of Psalm 51.

It’s about being washed from the dirt and grime of our sin and being bathed in God’s mercy and grace. It’s about receiving forgiveness and restoration amid brokenness. It’s where He shows us the beauty and power of surrender in this prayer: “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me . . . restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.”

I would say God answered that prayer, friends. And He does the same thing with us when little compromises make a big impact in our lives.

All it takes is a willing heart.