The Most Difficult Words

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Psalm 51; 2 Samuel 12:1-7; Matthew 3:1-12

September 23, 2012 • Portage First UMC

It is a desolate and forbidding place. The final day we spent in Israel, we spent in the desert—the Judean wilderness, to be exact. And it’s hot there—very hot in late June. We started very early in the morning, and it was already well into the upper 80’s, and it only got hotter. We hiked to the top of a mountain called Masada, where a group of Jewish rebels made their last stand against Rome, and from there, we could see out across this dry and dusty region. But there wasn’t much to see, unless you enjoy looking at sand. Not much grows in the wilderness. Even the sea is dead there. One of our next stops was at a place called En Gedi, a place where the young David once hid out when King Saul was chasing him, hoping to catch and kill the young man who would be his replacement. But even there, it was hot and dry, and we had to walk quite a good, long distance to find a waterfall, a place for fresh water and a bit of shade. The desert is a foreboding place.

And so it’s hard for us to imagine someone living there, let alone someone who might walk around in that arid region clothed in camel’s hair and leather. Yet that’s exactly how Matthew describes John the Baptizer, Jesus’ cousin, and the desert is the place Matthew says John spent his ministry. Teaching people in the desert, baptizing them in the Jordan River just before it flows into the Dead Sea. But even if John was crazy enough to preach in this desert, why would anyone come hear him or see him? Yet, they did. Matthew says people from all over the area—from Jerusalem and the area surrounding the Jordan River, they came. John apparently gathered quite a crowd. And yet, unlike today where you have to preach a kind, soft, gentle message to gather a large crowd, John’s message was fiery. Matthew has preserved just the essence of it for us: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (3:2). To those whom the people looked up to, the Pharisees and the Saducees, he had stronger words: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance” (3:7-8). And yet, they came, and they listened to his call to repentance, and they confessed their sins and received baptism in the Jordan River. John’s was not a “popular” message, but somehow, it resonated deep within the hearts of the people of that time. Why do you suppose that was? What was it about this new preacher and new preaching that caught on, that caused people to brave the desert and to repent of their sins?

Well, it’s risky to guess the motives of people who lived so long ago, but perhaps it’s because John’s message wasn’t actually new, and his call to repentance wasn’t something he thought up. The call to confession and repentance was as old as the Jewish faith itself. It’s a call deeply embedded in the prayer life of the Hebrew people. During this month, we are looking at ways we talk with God, and to do that, we’re exploring this book of psalms in the Bible, the prayer book of the Bible. What we have in this book are 150 prayers, some of them written for personal use and others written for corporate use or for worship times. And if we could spend 150 weeks looking at each one of the psalms, we would learn something different about our prayer life in each one, which is why during the week, we’re encouraging you to read more of the psalms, using either the Scripture list in the bulletin or the free YouVersion app if you have it on a smartphone. The psalms teach us many aspects of prayer: that prayer can be honest, that prayer should be full of gratitude, and that prayer can be exuberant. But within these 150 psalms are a few psalms described by scholars as “penitential” psalms—they’re prayers of repentance, of confession, of trying to repair our broken relationship with God. There are seven of them, and you’ll read them all this week if you follow the readings—Psalms 6, 32, 38, 102, 130 and 143, but the most famous of the penitential psalms is the one we read this morning, Psalm 51.

Psalm 51 is one of the rare occasions where we know when it was written and for what situation. The heading in your Bibles probably says something like this: “A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.” Well, we know when that happened. The story is recorded in 2 Samuel 11-12. It’s during the time David is king, and when he should be off leading his troops in battle, he’s back at the palace, walking along the rooftop. And from that rooftop, you might remember, he spies a woman bathing. Now, we could spend a lot of time wondering about the circumstances. Some have suggested she knew David was there. Others have said David knew she would be there—that kind of speculation is useless, because the point here is this: David saw Bathsheba, and lusted after her. Lust led to adultery, adultery to deception, and deception to murder (Williams, Communicator’s Commentary: Psalms 1-72, pg. 362). Bathsheba is pregnant, and in order to cover it up, David has her husband, an officer in his army, killed. Then, he takes Bathsheba, the grieving widow, as his wife, and he thinks no one will know. No one will be the wiser. And 2 Samuel 11 ends with these ominous words: “But the thing David had done displeased the Lord” (2 Samuel 11:27).

2 Samuel 12 opens with God sending a prophet named Nathan to David, and Nathan tells him a story of two men. One man was wealthy, and had much livestock. The poor man had very little, only one small lamb, who was like a member of the family to him. A day came when the rich man had company, whom he needed to feed, but rather than taking from his own livestock, he took the poor man’s lamb, and fed it to his company. When David hears the story, he “burns with anger,” we’re told, and when we’re angry, we tend to say things we might wish we hadn’t later. David bursts out, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity” (12:5-6). And then comes the punchline. Nathan tells David, his king, “You are the man” (12:7). And in the rest of the chapter, Nathan explains to David how what he did with Bathsheba was similar to what the rich man in the story did. He sinned, not only against Bathsheba and her husband, but against God himself. He broke God’s law. He acted selfishly and he committed sin after sin. And it’s in that context we find David praying the words of Psalm 51.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about about David’s story is that it doesn’t shock us anymore. We’re not surprised by David’s actions. Every day on our television, we are exposed to similar and worse things—and that’s just on the news programs! We’ve done away with sin; we act as if there is no such thing anymore. Because if it looks so good, how could it be bad? Or at least that’s the thinking we have. I don’t know if you read “Garfield” or not; it’s about the only comic I read anymore. But this week, there was this great illustration of our thinking about sin. Garfield walks past the first sign, which says, “Keep Out.” And then he walks past the second sign that says, “Stay Away.” And when he gets to the third sign, which says, “Turn back,” Garfield concludes, “This has got to be something good!” We do the same thing. We read the Bible, and we hear the warnings. We know what sin looks like. We know those things we do that disrupt our relationship with God, that break down the communication, the fellowship we have with God. We know those things that cause hurt to others. Sin isn’t just the tabloid headlines (cf. Kalas, Longing to Pray, pg. 86); it’s the small ways, every day, we reject God’s teachings. Sin is to “miss the mark, the goal, the way” (Williams 363). It’s to vary from God’s standards. We walk by the sign that says, “Keep out.” And we jog by the sign that says, “Stay away.” And we run past the sign that says, “Turn back,” and before we know it, we’re in the midst of a mess, far away from God.

After our time in Israel this summer, eight of us went on to Egypt, and after a night and a day in the Sinai peninsula, we spent most of our time in the nation’s capital, Cairo. Cairo has somewhere around 9 million people in the city itself, with an additional 10 million in what we would call suburbs. And it’s a mess. It’s a dirty, crowded mess. After the 2011 “Arab Spring” revolution, many inhabitants, in order (they say) to embarrass their government, began just throwing their trash in the streets, and in the canals, and just anywhere. And it’s all still there. People picnic in the middle of the garbage, which is hard to imagine, even though I’ve seen it, but then again, don’t we do the same thing in our spiritual life? We pile up garbage, stuff God never intended for us to carry around, to deal with all the time. That sin, this sin, that brokenness, that wounded ego, those angry words spoken in spite, that jealousy, lust, greed and so on. Unconfessed sin is the garbage of the soul, and it piles up, and unless we do something about it, it just stays there. We put on a “happy face” and we picnic among the garbage, but no matter how hard we pretend, everything is not okay (Kalas 84). That’s why these prayers, these penitential psalms, became so important to Israel. That’s why David, once he hears Nathan’s word, turns to prayer, turns to repentance. And out of his trial and his prayer, we can see four things we need to do in order to clean up the garbage sin has left in our lives.

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love” (51:1). The first movement in repentant prayer is to ask for mercy. David uses a series of images in the first couple of verses: “blot out my transgressions” refers to erasing a debt; it’s an accounting image. I owe a debt for what I did—could you please erase it? “Wash away all my iniquity” is an image from homemaking. The word refers to laundering clothes. Wash it out; get rid of the stains. Make it pure, like new. And “cleanse me from my sin” (51:1-2) refers to the process of removing imperfections from precious metals. Burn away the dross; make me precious, holy again. It’s the same request, just asked in three different ways, but what hope does David have that such a request will be answered or even granted? It’s because of who God is. He says that in the very first verse. It’s because of God’s “unfailing love.” That’s a word I’ve taught you before; it’s the word hesed, a very difficult word to translate, and so most of the time in your Bibles it will be rendered as “unfailing love” or “lovingkindness.” But the best translation is this: when the one who owes you nothing gives you everything. So because David trusts in God’s hesed, he trusts that his request for mercy will be granted.

With that belief firmly in his heart, David moves on to confess his sin. “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge” (51:4). Notice that there is no justification here, no questions about whether or not what he did was really a sin. No, David is here simply a soul deeply aware of his sin, of having offended God, and of being in deep need of God’s grace (cf. VanGemeren, “Psalms,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 5, pg. 378). Now, David doesn’t mention his specific sin in what we have, perhaps because, as it was added to the collection of psalms, that detail was put in the heading rather than the text, so that this psalm could become a prayer for anyone in the midst of sin. But David does recognize that even though he has obviously sinned against a great number of people, ultimately his sin was against God. He broke relationship with God first and foremost. That doesn’t minimize or discount his sin against Bathsheba, her husband, or his country, but it does recognize that the first place we start in confessing our sins is the one who made us. The first thing addicts have to do in overcoming their addiction is to admit they have a problem and that they are powerless to overcome it on their own. So the 12-step programs all center around confession of the addiction and reliance upon a “higher power.” David does that here. God, I have sinned against you. I have a sin problem, and I cannot overcome by myself. Confession is not only good for the soul; it’s essential for our spiritual health.

It has been said that the most important words in the English language are, “I’m sorry.” And perhaps because of their importance, they are also the most difficult words to say. We are beyond reluctant to admit when we’re wrong, especially to the other person. We might, on some level, admit it to God, but we strongly dislike admitting to someone else that we are imperfect. You see, once we say those words to someone else, they have a measure of power over us. Will they accept our apology? Will they forgive us? When we say, “I’m sorry,” we place ourselves in the weaker place in the relationship, and we don’t want to do that. We’ve grown up believing the lie that was popularized in the book and movie Love Story: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” That’s a lie. If we love someone, really love them, we ought to more willing to admit it when we have done a hurtful thing, when we have sinned against them (cf. Kalas 81-82). Confession includes speaking to God, and also to the other person. David, of course, can’t confess to Bathsheba’s husband, arguably the one most victimized by David’s sin, but he did have to make things right with the people, and with Bathsheba. “I know my transgressions,” David prays, “and my sin is always before me” (51:3). Confession—even if it means saying those most difficult words—is necessary for true, deep and lasting healing to take place.

David’s prayer doesn’t stop there, however. He continues: “Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean...create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me” (51:7, 10). Once confession has been made, we can seek a new beginning, a fresh or “clean” start. David uses a very strong word for “cleanse” here, a word which literally means “un-sin me” (Williams 366). Remove every evidence of sin from my life, Lord, and then, in perhaps the most famous verse from this psalm, he asks for a “pure heart” (51:10). He asks God for a radical new beginning. We balk at such a request, because we’ve swallowed the belief that “well, nobody’s perfect, and everyone sins, so this is an impossible request.” Would it surprise you to know that the early Methodists preached a doctrine they called “entire sanctification” or “Christian perfection,” a state of life that, John Wesley believed, was possible. Not “sinlessness” or “perfection” in the sense that we usually think about—that we do everything perfectly and never again break any of God’s laws. Rather, those early Methodists testified of coming to a place in their lives where they loved God so much they only wanted to please him and had no desire to do anything else. Perfection in love, it also came to be known as. Can we imagine a heart so focused on God that love is all we see in that person? Usually, at least in my experience, the persons who come to that place, are the first ones to deny any sort of “arrival.” They typically are more aware of how far they are from what God desires than the rest of us are. My high school Sunday School teacher was so in love with Jesus she couldn’t help but ooze that love out on to everyone else. She was a grandmother, and yet she taught high school Sunday School every Sunday for over twenty-five years. Esther didn’t take summers off. She was there, in that non-air-conditioned church, telling high schoolers how much Jesus loved them. Esther would have told you she had far to go to be who God wanted her to be, but for me, in that class, she was a role model of what it meant to love like Jesus loved. There wasn’t a person I ever heard Esther talk bad about, and there wasn’t anyone she wouldn’t try to help. Is that what David pictured when he prayed for a “pure heart”? I don’t know, but I do know David longed for a new start, a “reboot” of sorts in his relationship with God, his creator. Seek a new beginning.

And, then, fourthly, be a witness to God’s mercy. David promises, “I will teach transgressors your ways, so that sinners will turn back to you” (51:13). A little further on, he prays, “Open my lips, Lord, and my mouth will declare your praise” (51:15). Now that he has been through the fire, now that he has repented, now that he has been restored, David can give witness to the goodness of God. He has a renewed spirit, willing to do God’s work, willing to share with others what he has been through. Credible witnesses are those who have been there, whose lives have been changed, redeemed from their own sin and struggle. Paul could preach about legalism because he had been a legalist (Williams 368-369). St. Augustine could talk about forgiveness from sexual sin because he had been there, had engaged in many forms of sexual sin. Chuck Colson could speak to prisoners about forgiveness and redemption because he had been a prisoner, had been caught in a nationwide scandal. Credible witnesses can speak and be heard because they have been redeemed from their own sin. So, that begs the question: what can you speak about? What do you have in your life you can use to encourage others? This is not about glorifying sin or making ourselves seem important or super-spiritual. If anything, it’s about making ourselves less so that Jesus, the great redeemer, can shine through. If we use our sin to build ourselves up, to build our own reputation or to make others feel small somehow, we’re not really giving witness to God and we’re not exhibiting a pure heart.

And that gets to the heart of what David prays at the end of this psalm. “You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings” (51:16). What a shocking thing to pray! The whole Old Testament faith system was built around sacrifices. If you had sinned, if you had broken your commitment to God, there were intricate prescriptions to follow in order to make things right. You did this sin, you offered this sacrifice and that was what gave you forgiveness. And so the people followed that. It was easy. Do this, do that, get forgiven. Except that it was all too easy for it to become an empty ritual. Doing the sacrifice, David says, without a change of heart, without an affected life, was useless. Repentance was not about mechanical obedience. Repentance is about having our hearts broken because we have broken God’s heart. “My sacrifice,” David says, “is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise” (51:17). The sacrifices were never about earning forgiveness; they were about teaching the people that forgiveness costs us something. God doesn’t want your empty rituals. God wants your heart. And so to come to church just to “feel better” or get rid of guilt or to earn points with God—that’s not why we come here. We come to church, we come to worship to offer our whole selves, to say, “God, here I am, broken and yet forgiven, so use me as you can.” When we do that, then, when that’s why we gather, God will use us, and God will accept our worship. David says that. When we come to God with a heart set on him, “Then you will delight in the sacrifices of the righteous, in burnt offerings offered whole; then bulls will be offered on your altar” (51:19). It’s not that the forms are wrong or that God despises the rituals of worship. It’s just that those things don’t come first. As Ellsworth Kalas says, “We fail at repentance because our friendship with God has so little passion” (86). The first thing God wants to see is our broken heart, our surrendered heart, and that’s why we need repentant prayer. Only with this kind of prayer can we come before God and know our worship is pleasing to him.

When I went to college, I did the church shopping thing. I had no car, so I was limited to the churches around campus, which, at Ball State, are rather numerous. And so every Sunday I was in town, I visited a different church, and it became sort of funny because every church I visited was serving communion that morning. After three or four times of this, I began to wonder if God was trying to tell me something. Communion was comforting, though. Having grown up in the Methodist church, with our open table, communion was something I had always been able to participate in. It was something I was familiar with. And so I went along, but as the weeks went by, I started to realize I was just taking communion because I always had. It wasn’t that it didn’t mean anything; it just didn’t mean a whole lot. It was a reminder of Jesus’ death for me. But somewhere in that process, I was struck by the power of that statement. It wasn’t meant to be just a reminder; this was what Jesus gave us to remind us constantly of the high cost of forgiveness. To forgive us, he took our penalty. He took our death. He died for our sins. He died for my sins. He died so I could be forgiven. And in the midst of that first year at college, holy communion took on a power and a meaning it had never had before. The form didn’t change. The words didn’t change. The elements didn’t change (except for the one Lutheran church I visited where they used wine instead of grape juice!). I changed. I began to see in that bread and in that cup more than a reminder or a memorial. This is what it cost God to forgive me. The cross is what it cost. Jesus was the final sacrifice. And suddenly, as that truth sunk down into my heart like never before, repentance and forgiveness took on a deeper significance.

And so, back to John, and the question I asked at the outset: why did they come out to the desert to see this crazy preacher? Could it be the longing that is in every human heart to experience forgiveness? Could it be the people had this desire to reconnect with God, and John’s ministry was the first thing in a long time that seemed to help in that regard? Could it be that, in the waters of baptism there in the Jordan River, the people found an outward symbol of something happening deep within them? They knew the sacrifices were mostly for show. They knew that without a real heart change, the sacrifices were just a brutal, bloody routine. And, for that matter, so was the water in the Jordan. But something in John’s preaching, something in his call for repentance, resonated in their hearts.

So what about you? I don’t pretend to be as powerful a preacher as John was, nor are you likely to find me in camel’s hair (nor will I eat locusts). But what is there in David’s heartfelt, honest cry to God that resonates in your heart today? More specifically, what is there you need to experience forgiveness from today? David tells us that if we ask for mercy, confess our sin using those most difficult words, and seek a new beginning, he will use us as witnesses that forgiveness is possible, release from sin and guilt and shame is possible. So what is it in your life this morning you need to talk with God about? We have this promise, a promise David knew and the reason he prayed as he did: “If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Can you believe that promise? Can you grab onto that promise today?

I’m going to pray for all of us this morning, and then during the final song, I’d invite you, if you want, to come and pray at the kneelers this morning. You can, of course, pray in your seat, but sometimes, that movement forward, that physical movement toward the altar and the cross is important as we seek to move closer to God. If you need someone or want someone to pray with you, grab them or find a Stephen Minister. But my prayer and hope today is that none of us leave here without having done what David did, to pray for mercy, to confess our sins, to seek a new beginning and to be a witness of God’s mercy. So let’s pray, and sing, and pray some more.