David had everything. God took him from the sheep field and put him on a throne. He went from forgotten son to king of Israel. He had money, power and everything anyone could wish for. He had sons and daughters. He had victory in battle. He had the favor of God on his life in a way few men have ever had. If you could have drawn up a perfect life for a man, it would have looked like David’s.
But lust is a powerful thing.
It doesn’t matter how much you have. It doesn’t matter how blessed you are. Every man and woman is vulnerable to lust and to the pull of a forbidden desire. When you are cave to lust, and you cannot control your desire for what God said is off limits, it will cost you far more than you ever imagined. David traded a moment of pleasure for a lifetime of pain.
Scripture does not hide what it cost him. God let us see every consequence so we would understand what we are really risking when we think we can get away with it. “But whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding: he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul. A wound and dishonour shall he get; and his reproach shall not be wiped away” (Proverbs 6:32-33).
Here is what it cost David. And here is what it will cost you.
Adultery Will Cost You Your Friends
Uriah was not some stranger in David’s army. He was one of David’s mighty men, listed by name in 2 Samuel 23:39. He was loyal, faithful, and a man of honor. He was a warrior every man would want on his side. When David tried to cover up what he did with Bathsheba, Uriah refused to go home and sleep with his own wife while the ark and Israel were at war in the field. That’s the kind of man Uriah was. More honorable than the king!
And David had him killed.
He sent Uriah back to the battle carrying his own death sentence in his hand (2 Samuel 11:14-17). A friend who would have died for him, and David made sure he did.
Adultery will cost you the people closest to you. The people who trusted you, and who loved you.
“A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity” (Proverbs 17:17). Adultery kills friendships like that.
Adultery Will Cost You Respect
Joab knew what David did. Joab carried out the order to kill Uriah. David tried to make it look like a battlefield death. From that day forward, Joab knew his king was capable of murdering an innocent man to cover his tracks.
When you commit adultery, you lose the moral authority to lead. At home, work and church. People who used to respect you will look at you different.
Adultery Will Cost You Your Children
Nathan told David straight: “Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house” (2 Samuel 12:10). That was the sentence. And it played out one child at a time.
The baby Bathsheba carried died (2 Samuel 12:18). David fasted and wept on the ground for seven days and the child still died.
Amnon, David’s oldest son, raped his own half-sister Tamar (2 Samuel 13:14). The lust David planted in his own house grew up in his kids.
Absalom killed Amnon (2 Samuel 13:28-29). Then Absalom turned on David himself and led a rebellion to take the throne. Absalom died hanging in a tree (2 Samuel 18:9-15). David cried out, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!” (2 Samuel 18:33).
Adonijah later tried to take the throne and was killed by Solomon (1 Kings 2:25).
Four sons dead or ruined. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). What you plant in your family in secret grows up in your children in public.
Adultery Will Cost You Your Family
David’s whole house never recovered. The sword stayed in it until the day he died. His wives were taken from him publicly. Nathan said, “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 thou didst it secretly: but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun” (2 Samuel 12:11-12). That was fulfilled when Absalom set up a tent on the roof of the palace and went in to David’s concubines in front of all Israel (2 Samuel 16:22).
The same rooftop where David’s sin started. God brought it back to the same place! What David did in secret, his children did in public!
Your family is not a private thing you can protect once you’ve broken it. Adultery tears the fabric of your house and the rip keeps getting bigger. Your wife, kids and grandkids. The damage does not stop with you.
Adultery Will Cost You Your Peace
Nathan’s words hung over David for the rest of his life. “The sword shall never depart from thine house.” Every time a son died, every time a daughter was violated, every time he had to flee his own city barefoot and weeping, he remembered why.
Listen to how David described the year he tried to hide his sin. “When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer” (Psalm 32:3-4). That is a man who cannot sleep, eat or sit still. Cannot look his wife or his children in the eye. His bones felt old. His body was drying up.
Adultery Will Cost You Your Testimony
Nathan told David, “By this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme” (2 Samuel 12:14). David handed God’s enemies a weapon. They got to mock the God of Israel because His anointed king committed adultery and murder.
People watch believers. They watch preachers and deacons. They watch Christian husbands and wives. They know what you say you believe. And when you fall into adultery, every sermon you ever preached, every prayer you ever prayed, every witness you ever gave gets questioned. The world now has ammunition to say Christianity is a lie and the people who claim to follow Jesus are no different than anybody else. While the actions say more about us than God, it doesn’t change the fact that people believe it.
You may get right with God and God will forgive you. But the people who watched you fall may never come to Christ because of what you did.
Adultery Will Cost You Your Joy
David wrote Psalm 51 out of this. Listen to what he prayed: “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit” (Psalm 51:10-12).
He did not lose his salvation. But he did lose the joy of it.
There is a difference between being saved and walking in the joy of being saved. David knew God. He had walked with God since he was a boy in the field. And after this sin, the joy was gone. He had to beg God to restore it.
Adultery will do that. It will steal the joy right out of your walk with God. You can still be saved, still be going to church, still be reading your Bible, and feel nothing. Because your sin has put a wall between you and your fellowship with the Lord.
Adultery Will Cost You Your Reputation
David had to flee Jerusalem when Absalom came for the throne. As he was running, a man named Shimei came out and threw stones at him and cursed him in front of everyone. “Come out, come out, thou bloody man, and thou man of Belial” (2 Samuel 16:7). Shimei called him a murderer. And he was not wrong.
Your reputation takes a lifetime to build and a night to destroy. Proverbs 6:33 is blunt: “A wound and dishonour shall he get; and his reproach shall not be wiped away.” People will forgive you. God will forgive you. But the reputation does not come back the way it was.
Adultery Will Cost Her Too
Sin never costs just the sinner. Bathsheba lost her husband, her first child, her honor and her name. For three thousand years people have read her story and known exactly what happened in that palace.
The other person always pays. Your spouse pays.m, their spouse pays, the kids on both sides pay. There is no such thing as a private sin that only costs you. Adultery poisons every person it touches.
“Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body” (1 Corinthians 6:18). It is the only sin the Bible tells you to run from. We are not called to resist or reason with. Run!
God forgave David. When David said, “I have sinned against the Lord,” Nathan answered, “The Lord also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die” (2 Samuel 12:13). God’s grace is real. If you have committed this sin, there is mercy at the cross for you. 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
The best time to fight this sin is before it ever happens. “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge” (Hebrews 13:4).
Remember what it cost David. And avoid it.
