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Sorry
Psalm 51
Joseph Queenan is a writer living in Tarrytown, New York. Three years
ago his alcoholic father called him to apologize for all the pain he had
inflicted on Joe and the family. Joe knew what the pain had been. For
years his father had beaten the kids, terrorized his wife, and wrecked
the house. He had gone through an endless series of menial jobs. And
like most alcoholics, he was a compulsive liar. He was so lazy he didn't
even bother to invent new lies. At least three times a year he would
tell them his wallet had been stolen at the Philadelphia train station.
Joe's father was a devout Catholic, they said the rosary as a family
devotion. His father dragged it out so it would take 40 minutes. One day
during the ritual, their dad pitched forward dead drunk and passed out
in the middle of the room. They left him there, face down on the carpet,
all night long. In the morning, he couldn't remember any of it. Like
many alcoholics, if he didn't remember it, then it probably didn't
happen. He couldn't remember beatings, thefts, car accidents, or lies.
Three years ago, Joe's dad called him up. Joe's mom had left him, and he
had lost his job and his pension. But these events had convinced him to
give up drinking. He told his son, "One of the things I've learned
through Alcoholics Anonymous is that you have to admit that you've hurt
people. "And you have to let them know how sorry you are. "Son, I'm
sorry for anything I may have done to harm you." He then shook Joe's
hand. Joe writes that he liked the part in his dad’s apology about
"anything I may have done." And the apology with a handshake seemed like
just another ritual.
To many Christians, this is pretty much what repentance amounts to. You
tell God you're sorry, and assume he'll accept you. After all, he has to
- he's God, right? Don't bet on it. True repentance is never just a
matter of being "sorry" for what you have done. True repentance means
you are willing to do something about it.
Tonight the game that we will look at is the game Sorry. I am sure that
you remember the game; you try to get your pawns from Start to Home, by
drawing numbered cards. Get a 5 and move ahead 5 spaces. Draw a 4 and
you have to move back four spaces, But there is a special card, the
sorry card. When you draw it you can send the person of your choice back
to the beginning. You see the name of the game is Sorry but it’s not
about being sorry at all, it’s really a game of revenge.
As I thought about this game over the past few weeks, I kept wondering
if we really knew what it means to be sorry. Sure being sorry, or what
we call it in church “Repentance,” is one of those things that we talk
about but we never really ever talk about.
Turn with me to Psalm 51 and let’s get our background for our sermon
tonight.
Psalm 51 is one of the few psalms where we are given the historical
background. The inscription reads, "A Psalm of David when Nathan the
prophet came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba."
You remember the story. He was on his palace roof one day when the army
had gone out to battle and he saw a beautiful woman next door bathing
herself. His passion was aroused, he ordered her to be brought to him,
and he entered into an adulterous relationship with her. Later, when
David learned that she was expecting a child, he panicked and tried to
cover up his actions. And one thing lead to another until he ordered
Uriah to be put in the forefront of the battle where he would most
certainly be killed. And when news of Uriah’s death reached King David
he felt he was off the hook, he had safely covered his sin.
Then God sent Nathan the prophet to David. When David was confronted, he
acknowledged the terrible sin he had committed. He fell on his face
before God and out of that experience of confession comes this beautiful
fifty-first Psalm. There are going to be several things that I want us
to notice tonight but we need to focus specifically on verse 10, where
David writes:
“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within
me.” Psalm 51:10.
First There is a Need in Our Lives for Cleansing
I heard about two bachelors who were talking one day, and their
conversation drifted from politics to sports to cooking. One of them
said, “I got a cookbook once, but I could never do anything with it.”
The other one said, “Too much fancy work in it, huh?” You first one
said, “Yeah, it sure was. Every one of the recipes began the same way -
‘Take a clean dish.’”
The problem with our relationship with God is much the same. God says,
“Take a clean life,” and we immediately go to Romans 3:23, “All have
sinned and come short of the glory of God.” And because we have all
sinned, we’re all in need of cleansing.
The concept of forgiveness, of being made right with God, is pictured in
the Bible in many different ways, sometimes as a new birth, sometimes as
the crossing out of a debt, sometimes as the breaking off of a heavy
chain.
But the picture of forgiveness that David uses here is perhaps the most
common picture throughout the word of God -- he describes it as a
cleansing. “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” A few verses earlier, he
wrote, “Wash me thoroughly from my sin, and cleanse me from my sin.”
Psalm 51:2. And then in verse 7, “Purge me with hyssop and I shall be
clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”
You see, sin is dirty and it stains our lives. Like the mechanic who’s
being working under the car all day we’re covered with filth. And there
is the need for us to be cleansed. So David says, “Purge me, purify me,
wash me.” The words he uses imply a thorough scrubbing. David says,
“I’ve gotten myself dirty. I’ve been out messing with some things I
shouldn’t have been messing with, and I’m covered with filth. I need for
you to clean me up.”
It’s a common image in the Bible. In Ezekiel 36:25, God says to Judah,
“I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.”
Ananias said to Saul in Acts 22:16, “And now why are you waiting? Arise
and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the
Lord.”
There is a need in our lives for cleansing.
That Cleansing Needs to Begin in the Heart
David doesn’t say, “Change the way I behave.” He says, “Change my
heart.” It’s not that how we behave is unimportant. It’s just that we’ve
got to start at the heart. We can go through all the right motions
without our heart being right, but if the heart is right, everything
else will fall into place.
That’s why in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “I don’t want you to
sit back all proud just because you’ve never murdered anyone. I want to
know what’s in your heart. And I don’t want you to think you’re somebody
special just because you’ve never committed adultery. Let’s take a look
at what’s in your heart.”
In Ephesians 4, Paul talks about the change in our lives which ought to
take place when we become Christians. He calls it putting off the old
man and putting on the new man. Living as a new man involves such things
as telling the truth and not stealing, things that we do. But notice how
he starts this section:
“that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which
grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the
spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created
according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” Ephesians 4:22-24
I want you to notice in particular that phrase, “be renewed in the
spirit of your mind”. I like the way the NCV translates this verse. It
says, “But you were taught to be made new in your hearts, to become a
new person.”
Paul goes on to say, “This is how you ought to act as Christians. And
the reason you ought to act this way is because you were taught to be
made new in your hearts.” That’s where the cleansing needs to start.
Then David acknowledges that God Creates the Clean Heart
David doesn’t offer to do it himself. In fact, he knows that he can’t.
And when David says, “Create in me a clean heart, O God”, he goes back
to the language of the creation itself in the first chapters of Genesis.
The word "create" used here in Psalm 51 is the very same Hebrew word
used in Genesis. It means to create something out of nothing. Human
beings can fashion, arrange, or remodel things. But human beings can
never create anything in the true sense of the word. We can’t bring into
being something that never existed before.
I got an e-mail this week about a group of scientists who got together
one day and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed
God. So they picked one scientist to go and tell God that they were done
with Him.
The scientist walked up to God and said, "God, we’ve decided that we no
longer need you. We’re to the point that we can clone people and do many
miraculous things, so why don’t you just go on and get lost."
God listened very patiently and kindly to the man and after the
scientist was done talking, God said, "Very well, how about this, let’s
say we have a ’man-making’ contest." To which the scientist replied,
"OK, great!"
God added, "Now, we’re going to do this just like I did back in the old
days with Adam." The scientist said, "Sure, no problem" and bent down
and grabbed himself a handful of dirt.
God just looked at him and said, "No, no, no. You go get your own dirt!"
The point is that, even if man can get to the point where he thinks he
can be on the level of God, he hasn’t even come close. Only God has the
power to speak and bring this world into existence. Only God can create.
So it’s not surprising that when David wants a clean heart, he says,
“Create in me a clean heart, O God.” Because, you see, I don’t have the
power to create a clean heart. And you don’t have the power. Solomon
said, “Who can say, ‘I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my
sin’?” Proverbs 20:9.
The answer is obvious. None of us can say that. Only God has the ability
to take a heart of sin and purify it and cleanse it.
People try to deal with their guilt in a lot of different ways. Some try
to cover it up with a lot of good works, thinking, “If I do enough good
deeds, I can balance the scales in my favor.” But good deeds won’t get
rid of guilt.
Only what God has done for the us through the sacrifice Jesus offered on
the cross can take away the sin and the guilt and the shame. Create in
me a clean heart, O God.
Finally We Must Have an Attitude That Allows God to Change Our Heart
Yes, God is the only one who can create a clean heart, so there might be
some who have the idea, “Well, let’s just sit back and wait for God to
do it!” The truth is, though, we have the right kind of attitude before
God can do anything with our hearts.
Notice how David prepared himself before he asked God to create in him a
clean heart:
1. There was contrition.
“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite
heart -- These, O God, you will not despise.” Psalm 51:17. David truly
was contrite.
Now Contrite is a big church word so what does it mean? To be contrite
means to be aware of our spiritual condition. It means that our inner
self is crushed with a sense of its guilt. It does not mean merely
feeling bad or remorseful about sin. It means that we have a genuine and
deep sorrow for our rebellion against God and a determined desire to do
differently.
All to often our tendency is to rationalize or explain or excuse or
defend or justify our sin. A contrite heart does not seek to blame
circumstances or other people or God for our own failure. You don’t see
David blaming God or Bathsheba: “Lord, if you hadn’t had me king I
wouldn’t be walking on this palace roof in the first place. And besides,
did you see what she wasn’t wearing?”
And yet we hear that sort of thing all the time. “If you were married to
this jerk, you’d cheat, too” Or, “It’s not my fault, the boss is so
cheap I have to steal from the company to survive.” Or, “If I didn’t
have such terrible neighbors, I wouldn’t lose my temper as much.”
If we ever hope to have a clean heart, there must be contrition.
2. There was confession
“For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.
Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight.”
Psalm 51:3-4a.
There are two sides to David’s confession. First of all, he confessed to
himself. He said, “I realize that I have sinned. I can’t deny it or
escape it or forget it. I recognize what I’ve done.”
Then he confessed his sin to God, “Against you, you only, have I
sinned.” Along with his admission of guilt is a confession of God’s
justice, God’s right to judge him for his sin. David makes no plea for
lenience, no claim that God is too hard on him, no appeal for a light
sentence. Simply put, he says, “You’re right, I’m wrong.”
Genuine confession demands that we take sin as seriously as God takes
it. It’s not just a slip-up, a mistake. We need to have the right
attitude toward sin -- a loathing, a disgust. And we need to determine
to turn away from our sin.
Solomon said, “He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever
confesses and forsakes them will have mercy.” Proverbs 28:13.
Here in Psalm 51 is a frank and full acknowledgment of sin. David says,
"I know my sins, I’m not trying to cover them up. They are always before
me, this double act of adultery and murder. I am guilty." He doesn’t try
to cover them up or to blame God for them. He says, "It’s not your
fault, God; it’s mine."
That’s one reason why so many cannot find forgiveness for their sins.
They suffer for years with a guilty conscience because they are not
willing to come to the place where they acknowledge their sin. They
refuse to call it what God calls it. They refuse to be honest with
themselves and with God. But we can never be forgiven while we do this,
for the first step in the process of forgiveness is an acknowledgment of
sin.
“Create in me a clean heart, O God.”
The most beautiful part of this story is that God did that for David and
he’s willing to do the same for any of us. God’s delights in having the
opportunity to forgive.
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