Sin will never bear good fruit; sooner or later, the results will always be negative - either for ourselves, for others, or both. What can sometimes happen, though, is that the initial results of our sin might appear to be positive, and this makes it easy for us to fool ourselves into thinking that what we did was okay. It seemed that David's lies made possible his escape and also provided food for him. But the end result was that hundreds of people lost their lives.
A similar thing happened in the life of Abraham. (See Genesis chapter 16.) When God's promise of a son and a multitude of descendants seemed slow in coming to pass, Abraham decided to take matters into his own hands and "help God out" a little. He did what was very common in his country and culture at the time: he slept with his wife's servant and had a son by her instead. It sounds shocking to us nowadays, but it wasn't so shocking back then. It was simply "what everyone did" in those circumstances. And, sure enough, the initial outcome of Abraham's actions seemed positive: now, at last, he had a son, and was finally on his way to being a "father of many nations," as God had promised.
But it wasn't long before things began to fall apart: first there was conflict between Sarah and Hagar; later Abraham discovered that God was not going to be manipulated into blessing the outcome of his "helping hand" and still planned to give Sarah a miracle baby instead. Once that happened, there began to be conflict between the two boys, Isaac and Ishmael…. and, thousands of years later, we only need to look at the Middle East situation to see the ongoing outcome of Abraham's decision to do things his way instead of God's.
Yes, the early results of our wilfulness might make it look as if we're reaping good fruit from our choices….. but time will bring the test, and we'll discover that bad roots always bring bad fruit. It is so much better always to do things God's way in the first place.
