The Weight of Hidden Sin | Cornerstone Church | Pastor TJ McConahay

We are ending our friend series today, and we've been talking about the life of David. And we can't end the life of David without talking about David's worst moment. David's worst moment. In in about a three month span, David lied to his entire kingdom. He isolated himself. He committed adultery.

He lied to try to cover that up. He tried to make one of his children illegitimate. He conspired to kill one of his lieutenants. He ended up killing and becoming a murderer,

and then he was cold towards the whole thing. And how did we end here? How did David get to this spot in his life? The little shepherd boy who slayed Goliath, who was a man after God's own heart, how did he end up in this dark place? I think you have to back up. You see, David wanted to be a king over a peaceful kingdom,

but the time when David became king, the kingdom was not at peace and what was required of David was for him to be a warrior king. And so David picked up the sword and became a warrior king. But what David wanted to do more than any other thing was he wanted to shepherd Israel.

He wanted to sing songs. He was a poet, and he wanted to build the temple. He wanted to build the temple of God. And so as he's starting the the the preliminary construction phases of God's temple, his friend Nathan, the prophet has to come to him and deliver bad news. David, there is too much blood on your hands

so you will not be permitted to build the temple. And David, in this moment, he has to feel pretty horrible because God called him to be the warrior king.

And so, the thing that God called him to do is now preventing him from doing the thing that he wants to do. If you were to circle a time in David's life where it starts to decline, it's right in that moment.

From that point on, he marries one woman, he marries two women, and by the time we find him in second Samuel 11, he has seven wives and he is in a very, very dark place. If you have your Bibles, turn to second Samuel 11 verse one. I'm gonna be reading now the NIV. It says this,

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. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah, but David remained in Jerusalem. If you have a bible you can highlight, highlight that part where it says David remained in Jerusalem. Now,

if you guys have been in church for any amount of time, you've heard a sermon on this part of David's life. It's one of the most common ones, but I think that a lot of pastors make a mistake here. They look at that section where it says that all the kings went off to war and David stayed home and they say this,

the first sin that David committed was the sin of complacency, of idleness, of laziness, because idle hands are the devil's footwork or something. Problem with that is that's not what's happening.

David has been declining for a long time, and what he's ultimately doing is he's sending everyone else out to war, leaving himself at the home at home. Why? Because he wants the isolation. He wants nobody to be looking about what he's about to do next. He's pushing the incognito button on his kingdom. Guys,

the first stop on the road to destruction is a place called isolation. The first stop on the road to destruction is a place called isolation. Guys,

there's something that's talked about a ton in the bible. We don't talk about it very much anymore at churches, but I think we need to talk about it because Jesus talked about it. That is the idea of a literal place called hell. And one of the defining characteristics of hell is isolation.

Have you ever heard someone say, hey, I'm gonna go to hell because it's where all my friends are at, and we can have a party? That's not hell.

Hell is you're separated from God. I love the way C. S. Lewis describes it. If heaven is the place where God, we look at God and we say, your will be done, your will be done, your will be done, then hell is the place where God looks at us and says, your will be done, your will be done, your will be done. You wanted yourself,

you didn't want anything else, and now you have it holy and forever. Isolation is the first stop on the road

to destruction. Isolation is a really hard place. I remember the first time I felt the coldness of isolation, the manifestation of hell that is isolation. I was 10 years old when my mom lost custody of me. The months leading up to that were horrible. My family was caught in a bitter, bitter dispute. Lawyers, courtrooms,

in and out, my family testifying against each other. What was really happening was me and my three sisters, me and my two sisters, I had three, but two of them were with my dad, were victims of domestic abuse at the hand of a stepfather. And as soon as my dad got that information, he sued my mom for custody.

And so we were in and out of court, and the judge was exhausted by my family's brokenness. So he invited me and my two sisters backstage, back to his backstage, back to his chambers. And he said he said this, where do you guys wanna live? My oldest sister went first, I'd like to stay here with my mom.

My next oldest sister said, yeah, I'd like to stay here with my mom. Now I'd gotten the brunt of the abuse at this point and I couldn't really trust my mom or the situation that was going on there. So I said, I'd like to live with my dad. And the judge looked at us as a family and he said, fine, kids, your will be done.

And he gave custody of me to my dad and left the girls with my mom, split my family. It was a cold, cold day when my grandparents came to pick me up. Now, what you need to know is this, my dad lived two states away in California. We were in Wyoming at the time.

It was my grandparents' job to pick me up that day and to take me to my new life. It was cold and it was early. I hugged my mom, but I didn't cry. Now, mamas, I wanted to cry. I wanted to just ball, but I had heard what my family had said about each other in court.

And I knew that my grandparents didn't like my mom and my mom didn't like my grandparents, and I thought that any emotion that I would give to this situation would show whose side I was on, so I didn't want anybody here to feel bad about the situation, so I just stayed numb.

I hugged my mom and it was a cold hug. I hugged my sisters and it was a cold hug. And then I went to go get in the back of my grandparents car. Now here's the thing is this was the nineties. So seat belts were kind of an option at this point. My grandparents had carpeted

and canopied the back of their pickup truck and they'd made that the kids zone. And every summer, me and my sisters would ride in that for two days to California to visit my dad. So I thought that's where I'm gonna be riding that. But my grandpa looked at me and he said,

TJ, if you ride back there, you're gonna be pretty lonely. This is the first time I realized that I wasn't gonna have my siblings anymore. They invited me to come and sit between them on the bench seat of the old Chevy truck.

I looked out the window and I watched as my house and my family got smaller and smaller and smaller. Mamas, I wanted to cry, but I was scared. What are they gonna think of me? I'm so thankful in this moment that there was a mama in that car with me, my grandmother. And

there was no lost love. There's no love lost between her and my mom. But in that moment, all she saw was a hurting little boy. She looked me right in the eyes. I can, you know, some memories you can feel, I can feel this memory. And she said, TJ, it's okay to cry.

Lost it, just switched my soul. I just started bawling and I just buried my head in my grandmother and I just bawled until I fell asleep. See, my grandma, what she did in that moment was she took me out of my isolation. The coldness and the loneliness of that situation,

she woke me up from it. And she told me, TJ, you're allowed to experience this moment. And she gave me the opportunity to mourn something that would be a significant place in my life. And I gotta tell you guys, I spent the next six years feeling alone quite a bit. And David was different.

David, the aloneness didn't happen to him, it happened because of him.

He wanted the alone moment. He wanted the isolation because he knows what he's about to do next. And what he did next is this, he went on his rooftop, he found a gal who was beautiful, who was bathing up there, and he sent for her. Just turns out that it was one of his lieutenant's wives. Her name was Bathsheba.

Didn't stop David at all. Invited her into the king's chambers. He slept with her and he thought that he'd created the isolation. He pushed the incognito button and that no one was gonna know. But sin always finds you out. And she called a few months later, David, I'm pregnant. It's a soap opera.

David, at this point, should repent. He should take responsibility. He should go back to being a man after God's own heart, but he doesn't because he's so lost in his sin and he's spiraling, spiraling, spiraling. So he calls for her husband to come home. Uriah, the Hittite, he comes home, gives a report on the battle.

Then afterwards, he's like, hey, Uriah. Why don't you go ahead and go home? Have some fun. And then you can go back to the war. Uriah doesn't go home because Uriah is a man of honor.

He sleeps at the gate. And when David confronts him and says, why aren't you going home? He says, my men are in battle. Why would I go home right now? David knows that Uriah will not go home and sleep with his wife. He cannot illegitimize his own child this way. So he writes a letter to Joab that he has Uriah deliver.

The letter is Uriah's death sentence. In it, he describes this thing. He says, well, this is what I want you to do. I want you to put Uriah on the front lines of the next battle, and then I want you to withdraw everyone except for Uriah, and I want Uriah to die. Now Joab, he's a rogue

general. He hardly ever listens to David in the same way, but he does what David asked, not in the way that David asked. But he ends up doing a battle plan that's never going to work, and Uriah ends up dying. And he sends word back to the king that Uriah, the Hittite, the Hittite is dead. And this is how cold

David is in this moment. In second Samuel chapter 11 verse 25, this is what David says to the messenger who tells him about Uriah's death. David told the messenger, say this to Joab,

don't let this upset you. The sword devours one as well as the other. Press the attack against the city and destroy it. Say this to encourage Joab. Again, let's talk about how evil and how much of a villain David has become in this moment. He's finally got what he wants. He's created isolation. He's created lies. And now,

one of his men is dead because of his sin. And this is what he says, Well, you know, sword kills some people. It kills other people just like it. Just get back out there and try harder next time, guys. Guys, if you let your brokenness just stay broken, it leads to more brokenness. If

you let your brokenness stay broken, it just leads to more brokenness. If you just continue in sin, it will ask from you more sin to cover up for the sin that's already there.

I'm now living with my dad in California. It's me and him and we have a special relationship, a special bond. Things actually go well for a time. Till a few years later, my dad meets a girl. This girl becomes his girlfriend and she comes and she comes to live with us. Her name was Carla and she was the worst. She hated me,

and probably for good reason because I was not a good kid. I was doing something one day that most kids in the late nineteen nineties did. We were simulating pro wrestling. And back then, there The Rock was pro wrestler and he had two moves, which was the rock bottom and the people's elbow. And I

was performing both of these to an exceptional degree with my friend Luke. There's a glass table, coffee table right in front of us, and I rock bottom Luke onto the table. Here's the crazy thing is the glass doesn't break but there's these glass candle holders on the table that fly up in the air and they break.

Those belonged to Carla. Oh, no. I call her up. I let her know what happened, and she's mad. She's yelling at me on the phone. She says, when I get home, I'm going to let you know what I'm going to do. She brings home her laptop. Now in the late 1990s,

nobody had a laptop, but she had one from work, and she brought it home, which meant business. I don't know what she's gonna do on this laptop. She also brought this massive printer. She spends all this time hooking it up and kind of rage setting everything up, and then she just spends like two hours hunting and pecking.

Me and my dad are just watching. He doesn't know what's going on. I don't know what's going on. She presents to me a document. She presents to a 14 year old kid a document. It's an agreement that I have to sign. I'm going to spend the next six weekends working for Carla to pay off these stinking candle holders.

I'm bringing them, like, this is horrible. And I don't think that there's really any way out, but here's the crazy thing is, she put a clause at the bottom. She didn't have to put the clause at the bottom. I was hosed. I was gonna have to work for her, but she put a clause at the bottom that said this, hey, if you refuse

to do any of this work, then I get to go in your room and break something that you own. I don't have a whole lot of nice things. So I'm kind of doing the calculation in my head. I'm thinking,

yeah, that's the right thing to do. There's nothing in there. And so I walked back up to her. I handed her her document that she spent all this time on, not signed. She says, why isn't this signed? I said, well, I'm going with the option b.

She goes, the option b? And I and I point to the claws. She goes, really? And my dad goes, really? And I go, yeah. And she marches upstairs and starts, like, destroying my room, trying to find something to go. And then I remembered, oh, yeah. I have a PS one. Some

gamers in this crowd. You guys felt that on a different level today. You guys just sound like you got gut punched, alright? Oh, no. Maybe she's gonna find my PS1. She climbs out my window onto the roof. We have one of those. We live in a like a it's like a quad flex, not like

one of those places with like four houses next together and a tiny little backyard, and all of our neighbors don't speak English. They all speak different languages, okay? So, she gets out there and she starts yelling so everyone in the neighborhood can hear her. She's like, you might wanna come out here, TJ, because I got something that you might not want destroyed.

I come out there and think, oh, she's got my PS one. She's got my PS one. She's got my PS one. No. She's got my old nineteen eighties TV set. This is a good deal for me, actually.

I can get a new one. These things are massive, by the way. She's, like, five foot one, and she's, like, hanging on the edge, I'm praying for something evil at this point. You know?

And she starts counting down. And as she's counting down, the neighbors are all there. They don't speak English, but they start counting down with her. They're enjoying the show. And she gets to one, and she just throws that thing. It crashes on the ground. It just blows up, and then the whole neighborhood applauds,

you know, just everywhere. And my dad looks at me and is like, why did you do that? I was like, dad, this was the best deal I was gonna get in this situation. She came back to me and she said something to me that I'll never forget. Now we both have something broken.

The crazy thing is it wasn't the candles that we broke that day and it wasn't the TV that we broke. What we broke that day was my dad. See, he loved us both. He was trying to make it work. He was trying to do the best he can, and pretty soon, she would leave too, and that would break my dad.

And as that would happen, I would become more isolated and more lonely. Hey, the brokenness that you're letting stay broken, that's just gonna lead to more brokenness in your life. At some point, you're going to have to confront the brokenness. You're going to have to figure out a place to put all of those broken things.

And you're going to need someone who's gonna wake you up from your isolation and fix the broken parts. David is in a terrible spot because he has now committed so many sins against God. And Nathan, his friend, the prophet, gets word of it. He understands exactly what David has done,

and he needs to figure out a way to wake up his friend.

So, what he does is he speaks to his friend in a way that would wake up David's conscience. Because remember, David started off as just a little shepherd boy. So, he tells David a story. He gives him a report. He says this, there's two men from the same town. One's a rich man, one's a poor man.

The poor man has just one little lamb. The rich man has all these sheep and cattle. A

foreign traveler comes into there, and the rich man wants to impress him with a meal. Instead of taking one of his sheeps, he goes to the poor man, the man who has just one lamb, and this lamb is everything. It's like his daughter to him. He lets him eat. It is his table. It's a pet, basically.

And instead of slaughtering his own lamb for the traveler, he slaughters the poor man's lamb. David is enraged, and this is what he says right there, guys, in second Samuel twelve five through seven. David burned with anger against the man and said this to Nathan, as surely as the lord lives, this man should die.

He must pay for the lamb four times over because he did such a thing, and he had no pity. David condemns himself in this moment, and he doesn't even know it. Nathan looks into his friend's eyes, and he says this, David, you are that man. David finally gets it. He finally repents. He finally cries.

He finally responds and whatever that was dormant in him, it wakes up and he continues to now be a man after God's own heart. But here's the crazy thing is, right? David brought condemnation to himself. The man must die, and Nathan knew that that could be a solid outcome. But instead of bringing condemnation,

he brings conviction. Guys, the one who brings conviction without condemnation, that is a true friend. If you have a friend like that, you should say thank you to them. But here's here's the great news is even if you don't have a friend like that, that is the friend that we have in Jesus.

The one who brings conviction to us but does not condemn us. Romans eight says it this way, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Isn't it crazy that Nathan brings a story of a slaughtered lamb in to in order to restore David?

It's no coincidence because in your life, to restore all the broken things, you're gonna have to know a story of a slaughtered lamb as well. You're going to need a friend in Jesus who brings conviction minus the condemnation. Now, if you guys haven't figured this out, I'm a storyteller, right? I'm a narrative preacher.

On my laptop and on my phone, I have 400 stories that I can tell at any given time from my life, and I also put on there the last place I told it because I've gotten old and I've started repeating stories, okay? All right? I usually don't repeat a story within four years of telling it,

but there's one story that I'll repeat as often as it makes sense to repeat it because it's the story of the friend I have in Jesus. It's the day that I met Jesus. I was broken. My dad was broken. We weren't talking. We were isolated. I was

on a sin spiral spiral just like David, and I had ended up with an assault charge and a parole officer. My dad was in mandatory parenting classes by the state by the time I was 16 years old. I was headed for destruction,

but something happened. It was a crazy thing that happened that year is my older sister, the one who's only like ten months older than me, she got saved. But she didn't just get like a little saved. She got 1990s church girl saved, which is the craziest version of saved.

K? I remember I was eating a Hot Pocket one day. I bit into it. I went, oh, that's hot. And she just said, you think that's hot?

Try a Christless eternity. Oh.

She would tell me about Jesus all the time. She'd say, Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, TJ. And one day, I got tired of hearing that. I screamed at her. I said, I don't ever wanna hear this again, sis. You were there when our family was broken. You were there when the abuse was happening. You know all the things that happened to me. And if there is a God, I don't wanna believe in that God because where was he when we were all broken?

She cried and she ran away. And I thought, I won this argument today. She changed her strategy completely. A couple days later, she woke me up. She threw a bunch of, like, pictures on top of me.

And when I woke up, I woke up to her smiling face and a bunch of pictures. And I started looking through these pictures, and it's her with all of her friends on a boat, and it looks like they're doing some kind of surfing on a lake. I say, sis, what is this? And she says, that's wakeboarding,

TJ. I go, oh, sounds awesome. She goes, just so happens that me and my friends are going to wakeboarding camp. Would you like to go to wakeboarding camp?

Yeah. This sounds awesome. I should have figured this out. We left from a church parking lot. My grandma gave me a bible before I left. Nine hour trip in a bus. I quoted every Eminem lyric I could to everybody on that bus. I couldn't believe they didn't know who Eminem was.

We get there. Guy kinda looks like me. He goes, hey. Just wanna pray for our week at church camp. Oh, no. Oh, no. I look at my sister, and she's just smiling at me. And I'm like, she won.

Here it is. But here's the thing is I can't let her win. So I'm gonna get kicked out of church camp. And the way you get kicked out of anything is you just start a fight with somebody. And in the late nineteen nineties, the way you started a fight with most people is you just talked about their mamas.

Happy Mother's Day, mom. Now, Lynn says I'm not allowed to tell you guys the mama jokes that I had, but what you need to know is they were fantastic. I unloaded four on this kid, and he was bigger than me. I thought, for sure, we could get in a fight.

He looked at me after I said the worst things possible about his mom. He goes, wow. That's a really interesting perspective you have there. I'm talking about your mom. I couldn't shake them. Something started to awaken in me because the preacher started saying things that I knew were true.

He said something that I could not say was false. It was this, You are broken, and this world is broken too. I knew that to be true. Every piece of my existence was that, but the next thing he said is that's why we need a savior in Jesus Christ. He presented that yeah. We can clap for that.

He presented the gospel. He said, first thing you need to know is you're made on purpose for a purpose. That's the first thing. The second thing you need to know is that we broke it through sin. Third thing you need to know is that Jesus provided a way back through his death, burial, and resurrection. Number four is everyone.

Everyone needs to make a decision on whether or not they're gonna accept that free gift. That's the gospel. And he said, if you wanna accept Jesus, come forward. Old school Baptist altar call.

Like, everybody in the camp got up and went forward. These kids were already saved. It was, like, twentieth time getting saved probably, you know,

And I wanted to go up so bad. Everything he was saying was right. It was connecting with me. I could feel the holy spirit just knocking on my heart. I could just feel it, but I just sat there. I just sat there, and I waited, and I waited, and I waited, and the moment was gone. I thought that I had missed my moment.

This was an old school Christian camp, so we were in tents. We actually had to bring our own tents. So my grandma gave me a bible, but she also bought me a little one man pup tent. One man. When the eye breathe, the tent breathes, you know?

I parked it right next to this huge army surplus store tent where it seemed like every other dude from this camp was in there. So here I was, alone by myself and the people of God in a tent next door. And normally, they'd just be horsing around over there, but tonight, the night of the gospel,

they're singing and they're singing the best song that 1999 has to offer. Open the eyes of my heart, Open the eyes of my heart. Open the eyes of my heart. And I knew in that moment that I had to say something. So in that moment, I prayed for the first time in my life. I asked Jesus to be my savior.

I told God that I didn't wanna be alone anymore.

Church, that was the last day that I was ever alone.

Now it's your turn. This is your moment. A moment created just for you before time ever existed. God chose this moment to speak to your heart, and you know who you are. So I need to say this to you. Some of you need to say yes to Jesus for the first time. Today needs to be your rebirthday. Now, people of God,

some of you guys are already zoning off. Oh, I've heard the gospel before. I don't need the gospel. I'm I've been a Christian forever. You're already thinking about your lunch plans right now. Don't. We've got work to do together.

I need you right now to start praying in your mind that God would do a miracle big enough that only he could get the credit for it in this room, that today would be a day of salvation.

Everyone bow your head and close your eyes. People of God, start praying in your mind. Everyone else, if you don't know Jesus, I want you to listen to my voice. I'm gonna lead you through an introductory prayer.

I'm just gonna pray a line, and then I want you to say that line, not out loud, just in the quietness of your own heart to God.

If you wanna say yes to Jesus, if you want today to be your day one, if you don't wanna be alone anymore, if you're tired of the brokenness and you need a place to take it, this is your moment. This is your time. God created it for you in this place. Repeat after me in the silence of your own heart. Say this.

God, I need you. God, I've always needed you. I realize now that I'm brokenness,

and, God, I need a place to put that brokenness. I believe you when you when you say that you died for me. Jesus, can your death count for my death? God, I believe you when you say that you rose to new life. Can that new life be my new life? Jesus, I accept you. Will you also accept me? I love you.

I don't know what that means yet, but I love you. Everyone keep your eyes closed and your head bowed. If you're one of the people who said yes to Jesus so that I know, so that I can see what God did in this room, I'm not the only one looking up as me. If I see any eyeballs, I'll go poke them in the eyeballs. Right?

I need you to raise your hand now and tell me that I said yes to Jesus. If that was you, put your hand so high in the air that I can't help but see, especially if you're far back in the room. And I'm gonna count, and it's gonna take a second because there's hands going up all over this place. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,

eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, thirty, thirty one, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, forty, forty one, 42, 43, 44, 45. High in the back. Fifty, forty five, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50. People are standing up right now. 51,

52, 53, 54, fifty five, fifty six, 57, fifty fifty nine, sixty, sixty one, 62, 63, 64. I'm gonna keep going, 65, 60 6, 67, 68, 69, seventy, seventy one, 72, 73, 74, and I I lost count. 74, guys. My goodness. All right. All right, everyone look at me. Look at me.

I need you to do one more thing. We don't wanna just have emotional experience be what we do for salvation. We want these seeds to go deep and I gotta tell you at Cornerstone,

we have a discipleship pathway for you. We have a free bible for you and so I need you to do one more courageous thing. I'm gonna count to three. If you're one of those 72 people who said yes to Jesus, when I get to one, I need you to stand up. I know you're like, oh, I hate this. I thought this was a quiet moment. What are we doing right now? But here's the thing is God says, if you declare me before everyone, I will declare you before my father.

You have enough courage in you to do this walk now. Your walk with Jesus starts with a walk back through those double doors, out to the patio and to the life sign where there's people who can just describe to you the decision that you just made. Church, are we ready? Okay. Now here's the thing is,

it takes so much courage for these guys to stand up. So as they stand up, whether it be all 72 of them that go or whether it be one or four that go in this thing, we are going to celebrate in this room because God did something so big and the angels are celebrating with us. Are you guys ready? Are you ready?

Are you ready? One,

two, this is your moment. Go. Stand up and go. Go. Go. Go.

Out through the back doors. Into that place right there. This is your moment. I know I saw all those hands in the back. You guys gotta go. It's your moment in this place. This is a miracle big enough that only God can get the credit for you. Guys, this is your your spot. This is the spot that you've been waiting for. Church, are we so proud of what God has done in our midst?

God, you are so good to us. Church, let us stand. And, hey, if you didn't have courage to go when everyone was looking, when I bow, you can head right out that door, and you can head to the life sign too. Hey, if you're just a severe introvert, k, just text Jesus to 21999, and we got you too. Okay? Text Jesus to 2199,

and we'll make sure that you have a discipleship pathway. Everyone else, let's put our hands up, and let's release this to God. God, we believe in miracles, and we believe and love the miracle that you just did in our midst. God, we thank you for the mamas that are in this room, and I pray that they would be especially

blessed today because today is a day of salvation. God, you are so good to us, and we pray all of these things because you live, and all God's people said Amen. Amen. Amen. Guys, prayer team will be upfront.