The Consequences of our Choices are Always Greater than our Choices.
“Now therefore the sword shall not depart from thine house: because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife. Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun. For though didst it secretly: but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun” (2 Sam. 12: 10-12).
We all live by the truth that all choices have consequences. We think ahead and decide our consequences and then make the choices that deliver them. Consequences are the built-in judgment of our choices. The consequences of our choices are greater than our choices. The choice we make is like the planting of a seed, and the consequences like the harvest. We don’t meet with the consequences of our choices until they’re full grown. The choices we make today determine what we’ll face tomorrow. Well-thought out choices are the willful planning of the future.
King David chose to commit adultery with Bathsheba and in his effort to cover it up had her husband killed (2 Sam. 12).
The consequences of David’s sin were, his daughter Tamar was raped by her half-brother Amnon (2 Sam. 13), her brother Absalom murdered Amnon (2 Sam. 13: 28, 29), David’s wives were raped by his son Absalom (2 Sam. 16: 21, 22), David and his immediate family had to flee for their lives as Absalom sought to destroy them (2 Sam. 15: 14), more than twenty thousand men, as well as Absalom died in the issuing battle (2 Sam. 18: 7, 14, 15).
God forgave David for his sin and did not kill him because he confessed and repented of his sin (2 Sam. 12: 13). God did not deliver David from the consequences of his sin, though he did help him through them (Ps. 3).
Jesus did not die to deliver us from the consequences of sin. He died to deliver us from sin (Mt. 1: 21), so that we wouldn’t sin and have to face the consequences.
James H. Cagle
