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Good news for broken people: I Psalm 51: 1 – 19 Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 05 Aug, 2007 |
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“I KNOW my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.” Have you sinned? Have you fallen? Do you need a hand to stand up? The gospel is good news for you! Who doesn’t have things to be ashamed of. Are you crippled by your past? The shame; the humiliation, the sense of failure — is it too much, too intolerable to bear? The gospel is good news for broken people like you and me. We all know about broken things. When they build aircraft, these days they use a technique called monocoque construction. It makes a very light, very strong frame. But there is the problem with monocoque. A tiny break can drastically weaken the frame. In the 1950s, the English Comet jet airliner was ahead of anything the Americans others had ever built. The age of jet transport had come. But flight stresses weakened a corner of one window frame. That was enough. Two Comets broke up in flight, killing everyone on board. Some of us have a little break, a crack, a small weak spot, but every bump we strike causes something else to break. On the other hand, I had a broken pocket calculator once which only needed a couple of rechargeable batteries and a bit of superglue to make like new. How simple! You had to look really closely to see where it was mended. Another time, I dropped a piece of equipment on the floor, I lost my balance trying to pick it up, and I put my foot right onto it! There weren’t any pieces big enough to fix. And when Chris caught her foot in a cable for my old laptop computer, it tipped over onto carpet, and never worked again. Even the repairer said it looked fine, but electronically it was beyond fixing. Some of us have fine weaknesses, tiny cracks, which seem safe enough, but will burst catastrophically under pressure. Some of us are crushed almost beyond recognition. What we know we once were is no longer apparent, and we know it. Some of us are damaged iin hidden ways. You would hardly know it, but something just doesn’t work. Some of us have superficial damage which is relatively easily fixed. We are all damaged at some level. We all need gospel help to move on and grow.. Some people look at a Christian and say, “So and so is a Christian, and he is angry, he manipulates to get his own way. His bad points outweigh his good ones.” But aren’t we all broken in different ways? Everyone starts out at a different place as a believer. Some have a long way to go in terms of character, just to get to where some others were when they started. It’s like that old hymn, Just as I am. It expresses a profound truth: You start from where you are. It’s a race where everyone starts from home, and we all get rewards for how far we come before the whistle blows — and then we all go together to the final reward, that home in heaven from which we will never again depart. The basic truth is not that some start or go on better than others. The basic truth is that every single one of us needs God’s mercy and compassionate forgiveness. David grasps this: PSA 51:1 Have mercy on me, O God, 2 Wash away all my iniquity The starting point for every single person is that, somehow, to some extent, we know our need, and we cast ourselves onto God. Part of growing to maturity is learning to face ourselves as we are and not as we would like to be. David immediately went on: 3 For I know my transgressions, 4 Against you, you only, have I sinned 5 Surely I was sinful at birth, I have to ask two questions about Bathsheba. First, why she was having a bath in the backyard where the King only had to look out his bedroom window to see her. And, second, why she didn’t protest when David proposed adultery? I am sure she was willing. But David doesn’t mention her in his confession. His sin is his sin. Bathsheba might have made it easy for him, but he says, 'My transgressions, my sin — I have done this evil.” When God confronted Adam about his sin, Adam blamed Eve for offering him the fruit. We love to blame. But while we blame, we still refuse to repent. And God can’t deal with an unrepentant heart. As David knew, 17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; If he had blamed Bathsheba, he would not have had a broken spirit or a contrite heart, because he would still have been trying to justify himself. David was a great king and a great man. He led the nation to victory many times, He outwitted enemies if he couldn’t deal with them immediately. He knew the value of celebration, and he led the nation to celebrate its God. He brought the Covenant Box back to Israel and captured Jerusalem to be the capital. That is a mighty king. But he was also a deeply flawed character. If you look carefully at his story, you will see that he had a thing for married women. Nearly all his wives had been married before. So Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife, lived next door and he saw her bathing in the backyard. What a temptation to commit adultery! She got pregnant, he brought Uriah back from war. He wanted it to look like Uriah was the father. And, when that didn’t work, he sent Uriah into a dangerous part of the battle, where he was killed. The kings of the nations in those days were an immoral crew; but God expected far better of his very own appointed leader of Israel. There’s a warning in this story. The sins were adultery and murder. But their roots were in David’s brokenness. His problem of attraction to married women was sort–of under control until he saw an opportunity to do what he had previouly only dreamt about. Whenever we leave the roots of a weed in fertile ground, it will grow. And sometimes we Christians focus too pointedly on what we do, and never look at the roots that our deeds grow out of. I knew a lady who was on weekend detention for stealing. She had been before the courts many times and put on probation, but finally she was sentenced. As far as I could work out, she was looking for attention and for a sense of success. You might stop her from stealing, but what else would she do? She might leave the things on the racks at K-Mart, but unless her sense of loneliness and failure were fixed, she would do something equally stupid. When we focus on the deed and leave the root, it is like a gardener who tends his plants every day. He might not like rhubarb, but, if he looks after it, it grows, like it or not. David knew the secret. He wrote, PS 51:6 Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; He knew that you can’t restore the surface until you deal with what is inward and concealed. You know the story about the knight and the green–eyed monkeys. The knight was on his quest for great wealth and the hand of the beautiful princess. But he knew that no one had been able to cross a dangerous bridge across to the island where these things lay. They had all fallen off and plunged into the deep chasm below. When he reached the last village before he had to go alone onto that bridge, everyone was astonished at him, and they fled when they saw his grimly determined face. But one villager was brave enough. “Sir knight, prithee, do not proceed! Be content, do not seek untold wealth and supreme beauty.” “I must go on,” the knight said, “For I have sworn a vow. But can no one here tell me how to safely cross the accursed bridge?” “There is one,” said the villager. “A wizard lives right by the bridge. He shall tell thee something to your advantage.” So the knight asked the wizard. “Many a knight hath come,” said the wizard, “And many have asked the secret of crossing the bridge. Wilt thou heed what I say?” “I will heed!” said the knight. “Then here is the secret,” said the wizard. “As thou crossest the bridge, thou must do two things. First, hold tightly to the handrails and step carefully. The second is this: thou must never, on any account, think of green–eyed monkeys as thou crossest the bridge.” What I try hardest not to think about will always be the strongest grower in the garden. David faced his sin squarely. He didn’t try to overcome it by an act of will. He overcame by the work of God in an open life. 6 Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; 7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; St Paul was troubled by something. He called it a thorn in his flesh, and he asked God three times to take it away. But God didn’t take it away. He said, My strength is enough for you: God is wise not to take away the things we struggle with, because he gave them to us in the first place, even if we misuse his gifts. He heals the damage rather than take away the damaged area. 8 Let me hear joy and gladness; This is healing, not amputation! The bones are crushed, but not cut out, and joy follows upon weeping. I have found that some of my best ministry has come out of the damaged areas of my life once Jesus has started the healing process. Once I acknowledge them, God can redeem them through the blood of his son. Maybe you have had the experience of talking to someone and realising that that person is going through exactly what you used to face. You see the symptoms; even when you can’t put your finger on it, you were aware of an inner struggle in that person. If you hadn’t been healed; if you had had that thing cut out and completely cast away, you would have had no sensitivity in that area of life. David prays, 9 Hide your face from my sins 10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, He doesn’t pray, like some teenager, “Take away my sexual desires.” He says, “Take away my sins.” He knows it is in his heart, in his inner desires and intentions that he needs purity, and that in his spirit he needs a steadfast and steady gaze on God’s will and not his own neediness. But David is suffering. He feels cut off from God and close to abandonment. In Psalm 22 he cries out, like Jesus on the cross, “Eli, Eli, lama asabthani? My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” David knows abandonment by a holy God because of his own sins and transgressions. Jesus knows abandonment by a holy God because he bore your sins and mine. Jesus cries out, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” But David is anxious to live again: 11 Do not cast me from your presence 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation David has lost his joy in the Holy Spirit, and he needs it back! St Paul warns the Ephesians not to make the Holy Spirit sad, and he warns the Thessalonians not to put out the Spirit’s fire. I can’t see anything in the Bible to suggest that a Christian can lose the Holy Spirit, other than by losing his or her salvation, if that is possible. But we can lose the joy of the Spirit, and the cause is almost infallibly sin. But God can restore that joy if we come back to him in repentant faith. And what a change! 13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, 14 Save me from bloodguilt, O God, 15 O Lord, open my lips, Here we have that ministry I spoke of before: that ministry of the redeemed, of those bought back to God through the shed blood of Jesus our Lord. Look at David. When he knows he is forgiven and cleansed, he teaches effectively, he evangelises effectively, he worships effectively. 16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; 17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; Isn’t it amazing? God takes the broken life, breaks it open, heals and restores at the deepest level, and blesses what we have brought to him. And this is what God wants. Not bulls on the altar, as in those last two verses. What God wants in a broken spirit and a contrite heart. That is what he can do something with. 18 In your good pleasure make Zion prosper; 19 Then there will be righteous sacrifices, But those two final verse point towards the perfect, eternal sacrifice of Jesus who was ...pierced for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, on him was the punishment that brought us peace, and by his wounds we are healed. There are no simplistic answers. You don’t just believe and all your troubles go. But in Jesus we find the way through — he is the one who walked the whole way for you and me, but was without sin. His spirit was always broken by our sin; he always came to his heavenly father in openness. His is the ultimate way of life, because it is based in truth., and it endures today’s pain while waiting for the joy to come. Let’s follow him, who mends broken lives! AMEN |
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© Peter R. Green 2007. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.) |
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