Speaker: Gareth Davies
Key Passage: Psalm 51
Date: 10 Jan 2010
Made Whole in the Hands of God
God desires that sin-stained rebels come out of hiding to seek him, broken as they are, to be made whole.
Intro
It all started on November 14 last year. Well, technically it started a few years ago, but bear with me.
25 Nov – a US tabloid runs a story suggesting Tiger may have cheated on his wife of 5 years, Elin.
27 Nov – Tiger crashes his car into a tree outside his home. Speculation surrounding the circumstances is rife.
29 Nov – Woods releases a statement accepting blame for the accident and expressing disapproval of rumours surrounding the ordeal.
2 Dec – US weekly magazine publishes an interview with a woman who claims to have had a 2 ½ year affair with Woods. Woods releases a statement on his website expressing regret for his ‘transgressions’ and the impact they have had on his family. He adds that he wishes to keep personal matters out of the media.
4-11 Dec – Further women emerge from the woodwork, claiming affairs with Woods.
11 Dec – Woods announces he is taking an indefinite break from golf for his family and apologises for his infidelity.
This is about the last that’s been reported on the incident, aside from further speculation about divorce and counselling. The media has swarmed on the story because everyone is thinking, “Tiger Woods… who would’ve thought?” Paul Holmes wrote in the Herald on 13 December: “The sudden, incredible destruction of the career and image of Tiger Woods just continues to amaze. In terms of destruction it is rivalled only by the Titanic. It is the human equivalent of the giant, unsinkable ship colliding fatally with the iceberg in the dead of the cold black night in the wastes of the North Atlantic, to lie within a couple of hours dead, 3000ft below [on] the frigid ocean floor.” He later reflects on the way the scandal has humanised Tiger, helping him step down off the pedestal of perfection that was created for him, whether intentionally or not.
King David got himself into a similar predicament – no, he wasn’t a pro golfer, and he wasn’t endorsed by Nike. But like Tiger, for whatever reason, David saw a woman that wasn’t his wife, and wanted her …and got her. Not only that, but they had a baby together. And when he couldn’t cover up that the baby was his, he had this woman’s husband killed. That’s where David is a little different from Tiger.
Last week Andrew reflected on Psalm 32, David’s request for forgiveness. This week I’d like to look at another Psalm that David wrote in response to his wrongdoing. Open up your Bible to Psalm 51 and we’ll have a look in a moment. The psalms aren’t a textbook on life, but are poems. This psalm is written as a prayer. Imagine we are reading David’s prayer journal. I find this really interesting, because we get a personal insight into the heart of David at a dark time in his life. We get to sit in on his conversation with God. So like I say, this isn’t a textbook, but we do get to see a facet of how David relates to God, so we can learn something.
Let’s read.
1Have mercy on me, O God, because of your unfailing love.
Because of your great compassion, blot out the stain of my sins.
2 Wash me clean from my guilt. Purify me from my sin.
3 For I recognize my rebellion; it haunts me day and night.
4 Against you, and you alone, have I sinned; I have done what is evil in your sight.
You will be proved right in what you say, and your judgment against me is just.
5 For I was born a sinner—yes, from the moment my mother conceived me.
6 But you desire honesty from the womb, teaching me wisdom even there.
7 Purify me from my sins, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
8 Oh, give me back my joy again; you have broken me—now let me rejoice.
9 Don’t keep looking at my sins. Remove the stain of my guilt.
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me.
11 Do not banish me from your presence, and don’t take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and make me willing to obey you.
13 Then I will teach your ways to rebels, and they will return to you.
14 Forgive me for shedding blood, O God who saves; then I will joyfully sing of your forgiveness.
15 Unseal my lips, O Lord, that my mouth may praise you.
16 You do not desire a sacrifice, or I would offer one. You do not want a burnt offering.
17 The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.
Keep your Bibles open, because we’ll come back to elements of this passage as we go along.
Hiding from God
Did you ever have a situation as a kid where you knew you’d done wrong, and then your parents call you in? For me, it’d be like this: “Gareth Kenta Davies, come inside! Your father would like to see you.” You know when they use your full name that you’re in trouble. I remember one time I knew I’d stuffed up big time; I couldn’t handle the potential telling off I’d get, so I ran down into the farm. I camped out under a tree, about 100m from the house, for 45 minutes or so, then I gave up waiting and went inside. I’m willing to guess most of you have similar stories from your childhood.
So imagine the same situation, except that the kid is David, and instead of breaking some vase or whatever, he’s broken his marriage vows and murdered a guy, and instead of having dad to deal with, he has God. You can imagine he would want to run away for longer than 45 minutes.
Aware of failure
It’s interesting, then, that this poem seems to be written when David is prepared to face God. Have a look at verse four: Against you, and you alone, have I sinned; I have done what is evil in your sight.” Now, this isn’t absolutely true because he’s wronged more people as well as God, but he goes to God as the primary person he has sinned against. He is willing to admit that he didn’t get things right.
I was reading the story of Adam and Eve the other day and what amazed me was the way both of them passed the buck when confronted with their wrongdoing. Adam was asked if he’d eaten the fruit, and he said, “it was the woman’s fault.” God asks Eve and she says, “it was the serpent’s fault.” Now, technically speaking, all three had a part to play, and some people even blame God for making the serpent in the first place. But my point is that neither Adam nor Eve was prepared to take responsibility for their actions. They only deflected the questions.
Hiding in the Dark
In verse six, there are two Hebrew words that have been combined here as ‘womb’. They are tûchâh, meaning your innermost being, and sâtham, meaning that which is covered. I think this adds extra meaning to what’s being said; God asks that we would be honest with him right to our core, and those areas of our lives that we try to cover and hide from him are still visible to him and accessible for his correction. Isaiah 29:15 says, ‘What sorrow awaits those who try to hide their plans from the Lord, who do their evil deeds in the dark! “The Lord can’t see us,” they say. “He doesn’t know what’s going on!” (NLT).
What I’ve learned through my experience, and the experience of others, is that, metaphorically speaking, we fit somewhere between nocturnal, like a cockroach, and diurnal, like a bird. Birds don’t get up to much at night, so light’s not a big deal to them. But cockroaches are used to hanging out in the dark. Have you ever lifted up a log during the day, or turned on the light at night, only to find a cockroach scurry away? They can go pretty fast when they are exposed to the light! Similarly, when we have been keeping secrets in the dark, the light is a source of fear.
In John’s first letter, he wrote, “God is light, pure light; there’s not a trace of darkness in him. If we claim that we experience a shared life with him and continue to stumble around in the dark, we’re obviously lying through our teeth—we’re not living what we claim. But if we walk in the light, God himself being the light, we also experience a shared life with one another, as the sacrificed blood of Jesus, God’s Son, purges all our sin.” (1 John 5b-7, Msg) In the light, all of our dirt is exposed, but in the light we can be made clean, not because of what we do, but because of who he is (Isa 43:25).
More than Forgiveness Required
I don’t want to downplay the significance of forgiveness, but I think there is more required than forgiveness here. Forgiveness lays the foundation to heal a relationship, but there are still consequences that may need attention. In the passage I read, David asks God to not only to forgive him, but also to “blot out the stain of [his] sin”. Even after forgiveness has been offered, there can still be stains. So David also looks to God as a stain-remover.
I don’t know how much experience you have with stain removers, but what I’ve found is you sometimes have to use a bit of elbow grease. Cleaning can be quite a workout at times! Although, I’ve noticed from ads recently that this is changing. The strength of the products has increased so that the work you do can decrease. ‘BAM! And the dirt is gone’, as they say. The thing is; no matter how strong a product is, you still have to do something. These stains aren’t going to disappear if you just sit on the couch. I think it’s the same with the metaphorical stains I was talking about earlier; we can appeal to God to help us clean up the mess we’ve made, but that doesn’t mean we can sit idly by. It’s not as easy as waving a wand, or imagining everything’s better.
Going back to our Tiger Woods story, if his wife forgives him, he still has to prove himself trustworthy, which takes time. He has to show that he is committed to the family and making his marriage work. He has to cut the connection he has had with the other women, and show his wife that his heart belongs to her and her only. The change of heart required can not be forced and the restoration that he desires is ultimately in God’s hands.
I’d like to delve into this restoration prayer more, but first I’m going to look a little more at the rest of the psalm.
Broken
In this book The Sunflower, Simon Wiesenthal tells the story of the day he was plucked from a Nazi work camp and taken to the bedside of a dying SS member. The man tells Simon stories of the atrocities he has committed and how his incapacitation has forced him to relive those moments over and over in his memory. After this detailed confession he asks if Simon can forgive him as a representative of the Jews who had died at his hand.
We find David at a similar place through the anguish expressed in this psalm. He is imprisoned by the guilt of his actions, and experiences such deep regret that he feels as if his bones have been broken. In fact, he says God has broken him. But he never descends into a pity party where ‘I deserve to be punished like this and everything that goes wrong is my fault’. No, he keeps looking up to God to lift him from the mud.
He has come to the conclusion that God’s judgement is fair and right, and he trusts God’s decisions, but that doesn’t stop him from asking God for mercy. Have you noticed that it’s in these desperate times that we see the true value of the relationship? A few weeks back in the boys’ small group we looked at Matthew 5:3. It says, “God blesses those who are poor and realise their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.” (NLT). When we are at our lowest – at the end of our tether – that’s when we need to be with him most. So that’s exactly what is happening here.
Made Whole Purpose
I’d like to point out that all of this isn’t just about us. It isn’t just about having a clean conscience and a white shirt again. Twice David talks about the witness he’ll be to others. He talks about teaching other rebels God’s ways and about singing of God’s forgiveness. I wonder if we appreciate this side of God’s hand in our lives. Who knows about the times God has intervened and salvaged your life? Who do you tell? Our stories are a powerful witness to others; more powerful than I think we realise.
Restoration Requests
Overall, it is clear that this is a prayer of petition. David knows it is totally within God’s power to make him clean – whiter than snow – and he’s not afraid to ask. There are a lot of requests; I counted seventeen imperatives. And in the middle of all of these I noticed a pattern that I’d like to call the five ‘R’s. I don’t think the sequence is as important as what’s being asked for as a whole. Let’s have a look.
First one: verse nine – “Remove the stain of my guilt”. This one is all about forgiveness. It’s saying, “God, I’m sorry, I made a mistake. I don’t want to get it wrong like that again. I want to make things right again. Please forgive me.” This is what Andrew spoke about last Sunday.
Next, verse 10 – “Create in me a clean heart” or as I see it, ‘replace my heart.’ To us today, the heart is about love and emotions, but in the Jewish understanding, the heart is the centre of your entire being. It is your thoughts, your desires, and your will. So to ask for a replacement heart isn’t just saying “I want to feel better”, it’s saying “change my thoughts, make me desire good things; give me your will, because mine didn’t work so well.” I see this as the core of the psalm. David doesn’t only want to get back on track, he wants to follow a different track where he can honour God.
In the same verse there’s another R: “renew a loyal spirit within me”. This continues along similar lines, asking God to rebuild from the rubble and restore his temperament so he is not at odds to his Creator.
Next I have remain, in two forms: “Do not banish me from your presence, and don’t take your Holy Spirit from me.” David is asking that God would allow him to remain near, and that the presence of the Holy Spirit would remain within him. When there’s significant hurt between you and a friend, it’s easy to distance yourself, but David wants to stay close.
In verse ten we find restore: “Restore to me the joy of your salvation”. David wants to know the delight that he previously experienced by being rescued by God. His downfall had led him to question the security of his salvation, so he asked that God would stitch things up.
There is a sixth ‘R’ that is not a request but an offer. David says that if God would do these things, he will help the lost return to him. Like I said earlier, God’s work in our lives isn’t going to be just for our sake. What has God done in your life that would help you help others?
What God Wants
There are two places in the passage where David talks about what God desires. The first is in verse 6, which I talked about earlier and the second is in verse 16 and 17. “You do not desire a sacrifice, or I would offer one. You do not want a burnt offering. The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.” This is about approaching God in the right spirit. The Message translation reads, “Going through the motions doesn’t please you…”
I have a policy with my wife Andie that I will not buy her flowers when I have done something to hurt her. I know, it sounds rough, but I believe it devalues the gift, and comes across as trying to buy my way out of the situation. But you know what? When I’m in such a situation, I still want to just make things right and move on. Guys are prone to wanting to fix things while girls want to talk through the feelings behind it. The fact is, it’s not about the gift, but the relationship. David recognises that God’s not after an animal sacrifice, and he presents himself and his broken heart as a sacrifice. This is the context for his prayer.
Conclusion
I wonder if God has been speaking to you recently about any of this. Is there something interrupting your relationship with him? Have you been broken by your mistakes or those of others? Is there a part of this prayer you would like to pray for yourself? In him we can find not only forgiveness, but also restoration. It is through the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus that we are reconciled to God, and reconciled to ourselves.
Paul wrote, “Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them. So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” 2 Cor 5:14b-17 NLT
In a moment I’m going to pray, and I’d like to provide a time where you can each offer your own prayer to God. I don’t expect you to pray aloud, although you’re welcome to. And if you’d like someone to pray for you or talk with you, our prayer team will be up the front here following our final song.
Let’s pray.