Too Much Time on Your Hands

In my last post I said I gained a sermon illustration from the experience of my computer becoming infected with a virus. See my earlier post “My Worst Nightmare” for a description of what happened.

What kind of a person writes these vicious little programs called viruses and worms? Intelligent but evil people with entirely too much time on their hands. Since my sermon that Sunday was on David and Bathsheba, this fit in perfectly.

The story of King David and his hanky-panky with Bathsheba starts out with this statement (paraphrased): “It was spring, the time when kings go off to war. But David sent his general Joab out with the troops to fight the Ammonites and David stayed home.”

Kings led the troops in those days, yet David chose the comforts of his new palace and the luxuries of the royal court to camping out in the fields. This gave him entirely too much time on his hands, and when he spotted the lovely Bathsheba from the palace roof, he gave in to temptation and had her brought to him. This resulted in a series of events that weren’t good. Read 2 Samuel 11 and 12.

The lessons for us are:
(1) Stay close to God so as to be able to better resist temptation. I suspect David had gotten caught up in worldly things and and drifted away from God.

(2) Keep busy and don’t give yourself too much free time, because too much time on your hands can result in sin.

(3) Don’t put yourself in a position where you can be easily tempted. Just don’t go to those places.