Feeling Good
Living To Feel Good Negates The Good In Living
We can feel good but after a while we want to feel even better than feeling good, think about all the jealously it brings. When we feel good but see others feeling even better. We work hard because we look to create better lives but the truth is if you look at people who spend their whole lives on drugs, taking pain killers so they can feel good but we all know they don’t accumulating or accomplishing much, it can create a laziness in us, if what feels good for me might not work out too go for you.
What feels good for me is taking what ever is in my way or gaining what would be your loss. It might feel good for me but in the end it might be a curse for you. Think about the choices people make, they might marry the wrong people because that person makes them feel good, while they were horrible to other people but never be horrible to them. Think about what it does to your faith, doing what is right before God verses doing what feels good to you. Think about the way you love your spouse, yes you love them but if loving them means that you have to feel bad in order to be a good spouse then maybe not so much.
Let me give you a little background on who David was... David was the son of shepard’s, he was just a Shepard boy when we first see him and Israel is being taunted by this big giant Goliath and we know the story, David takes him down with a rock, he becomes a hero to all the people and Saul the king(a corrupt king) takes David on as the general of his armies and that doesn’t because Saul has an ego problem and as soon as the people start to praise David Saul turns on him and begins to hunt him down to kill him and in the end Saul get’s killed in battle and God makes David king. David in the beginning was a great king, he was victorious in battle and what every he did it was done to the glory for God.But when we look at David in 2 Samuel chapter 11, things begin to go badly.
2 Samuel 11
11 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.
Kings are going off into war in the spring, because that is what kings do in the spring, But David sends his troops off to battle but he doesn’t go with them, and that is unusual for David. Every good king goes off to battle with their troops, David always went with them before but there is a shift taken place in David’s life he is becoming content with being content, he has shifted his life from living his life for the glory of God to living his life to feel good, and so he sends his troops off.
2 One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace.
Obviously couldn’t sleep from not doing much.
From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, 3 and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, “She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” 4 Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness.) Then she went back home. 5 The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, “I am pregnant.”
So what happened? David is bored because David is lazy, David can’t sleep David looks down from the roof and sees a naked woman and says to himself, I like that, they made it clear that she cleansed herself from her period, there was no mistake that the baby was David’s, this was David’s doing.
6 So David sent this word to Joab: “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent him to David.
David went to feeling good for this brief period of time to a time of desperation, trying to cover it up and fix it
7 When Uriah came to him, David asked him how Joab was, how the soldiers were and how the war was going.
David was sitting around and asking how are things, how is life on the front, “pure manipulation”.
8 Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet.”
This term was meant, that you should go home and have sex with your wife, go feel good.
So Uriah left the palace, and a gift from the king was sent after him. 9 But Uriah slept at the entrance to the palace with all his master’s servants and did not go down to his house.
10 David was told, “Uriah did not go home.” So he asked Uriah, “Haven’t you just come from a military campaign? Why didn’t you go home?”
11 Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents, and my commander Joab and my lord’s men are camped in the open country. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and make love to my wife? As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing!”
What is he saying? Think about this guy opposite of David, he has a chance for feel good particularly after a military battle to feel good after being separated from his wife and what does he decide? I’m not going to do this, if my guys, if my commander, are out there and they are struggling and suffering, who am I to be here making love to my wife when they are miles and miles away from theirs so he sleeps outside of the entrance of the palace.
He understands if you just live to feel good then you will feel empty and guilty and he says I won’t be a part of it, in fact he says to David as you live how could I do such a thing, in the past David
would of never do such a thing. David would of never left his troops, and now David wants him to participate in the same awful selfish behaviors that he engages in.
12 Then David said to him, “Stay here one more day, and tomorrow I will send you back.” So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. 13 At David’s invitation, he ate and drank with him, and David made him drunk.
First, he can’t entice him with manipulation and so now he just tries to affect him by corruption. I’ll get him drunk and then I’ll send him home and he won’t have the senses to help himself. David wants him to be with his wife so he can’t blame him for the pregnancy.
But in the evening Uriah went out to sleep on his mat among his master’s servants; he did not go home.
14 In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah.
Even though He is drunk there is something different with his character than David’s character. Here is the deal if your going to spend your life living to feel good you will never develop Character.
Character is something we develop when we put feeling good on hold when it comes to doing what is right before God. If you are going to do what is right before God, it’s going to be right in part because it is not going to feel good in the moment.
There are times in order to feel good you have to do good you have to do what is right even though in those moments it is not going to feel good but it bring good back to living.
15 In it he wrote, “Put Uriah out in front where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die.”
Manipulation didn’t work, corruption didn’t work, he moved to murder.
16 So while Joab had the city under siege, he put Uriah at a place where he knew the strongest defenders were. 17 When the men of the city came out and fought against Joab, some of the men in David’s army fell; moreover, Uriah the Hittite died.
18 Joab sent David a full account of the battle. 19 He instructed the messenger: “When you have finished giving the king this account of the battle, 20 the king’s anger may flare up, and he may ask you, ‘Why did you get so close to the city to fight? Didn’t you know they would shoot arrows from the wall? 21 Who killed Abimelek son of Jerub-Besheth? Didn’t a woman drop an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died in Thebez? Why did you get so close to the wall?’ If he asks you this, then say to him, ‘Moreover, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead.’”
22 The messenger set out, and when he arrived he told David everything Joab had sent him to say. 23 The messenger said to David, “The men overpowered us and came out against us in the open, but we drove them back to the entrance of the city gate. 24 Then the archers shot arrows at your servants from the wall, and some of the king’s men died. Moreover, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead.”
25 David told the messenger, “Say this to Joab: ‘Don’t let this upset you; the sword devours one as well as another. Press the attack against the city and destroy it.’ Say this to encourage Joab.”
What is David saying? He is saying, hey look you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet don’t worry about it, David has stop caring about his men now. All David cares about now is what makes David happy. Now he take this woman and make her is wife,
26 When Uriah’s wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him. 27 After the time of mourning was over, David had her brought to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing David had done displeased the Lord.
As you read the story farther yes it displeases God to the point that the woman loses the child. God takes the child from her and from that point on David’s kingdom would never be what it was, in strength, and integrity.
As we see in the psalms David cries out to God and begs his forgiveness and David goes on to live for the most part a life righteous before God.
Living to feel good negated everything good thing in his life.
A Gift Not A Guarantee:
What ever the excuse is, it is just that subtle, but you know it, maybe you are just living for retirement, work hard now then we will retire, or I’m just living for the weekend or I just want to be, we done it, it still doesn't feel good.
God promise to us is to make us holy not happy. but the truth is you can’t really be happy if you are not holy. Because any happiness that doesn’t involve holiness will blow up on you.
Recognizing when I feel good I rejoice and praise God for it, It is a gift, it is a grace but it is not a guarantee.
A Result Not A Reason:
We don’t do what we do in order to feel good, it can be a result but can’t be a motivator for life. What should be a motivator for life? Very simple to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
That my goal in life is to bring about the glory of God to bring about his pleasure and his favor and in that process to enjoy him. Every good thing comes from him not from this world.
A Feeling Not A Future:
You could line a whole bunch of things this week that could make you feel good but it’s not a future. In the end we all die and having live a life that made you feel good will get you nothing, Jesus didn’t come to save you to make you feel good, he came to bring you good news that you have a savior, who came remove all the bad news in your life, sin, aimlessness, selfishness, idolatry.
The good news is this, the bad news of this world, that in the end, will make you feel bad, but the good news is Jesus has come to negate that so that good living, living for God will produce good feelings.
What are you living for? What is the underline motivation/direction of your life?
This week be aware where as you bump into it, the choices you’ll make based upon what makes you feel good verses what is good, and then I want you to interrupt it and go in the opposite direction and I promise you if you do that you will experience the good in living which is much more powerful than the good of feeling.
Notes taken by: Lorelllawrence@comcast.net The notes is for you to have for review in the series, also to reflect on during the week.
God Bless,
Sermon by: Pastor Frederick Williams