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And the Lord sent Nathan to
David. He came to him and said to him, “There were two men in a certain
city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had
very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had
nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and
it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and
drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to
take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him,
but he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to
him.” Then David's anger was greatly kindled
against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this
thing, and because he had no pity.”
Allow me to interject here that this is a great
metaphor for what sin does… it is the taking, killing, and consuming of another
person’s pet lamb or something even more dear. Like any normal person, David was
angered by the injustice in Nathan’s report. But there was more to the story.
Nathan said to
David, “You are the man! Thus says the Lord, the God of
Israel, ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the
hand of Saul. And I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your
arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too
little, I would add to you as much more. Why have
you despised the word of the Lord, to do
what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the
sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the
sword of the Ammonites. (2 Samuel 12:1-9)
Nathan
came to the king with a compelling word picture that allowed David to
emotionally pronounce judgment on another person over the hypothetical taking and
killing of a poor man’s pet lamb. Perhaps we would like to judge David for this
outburst, however, is this not what we all tend to do? Instead of confessing
and repenting of our own sins, we often project our guilt onto others. We have created
an entire media culture that facilitates this cursed coping mechanism. There is
so much we can learn from the Lord and
Nathan’s approach, but that is not the focus of this post.
Instead,
from Psalm 51, I want to consider how we respond when conviction for our sins
comes upon us.
“You are that man!” Oh no!
How
do we respond when we become aware of our failure to love the Lord with all our
heart, soul, mind, and strength and have failed to love our neighbors as
ourselves? Will we deny doing anything wrong and embrace a lie, or will we
contritely admit the truth and run to our merciful God, our Heavenly Father who
loves us?
As
the narrative reveals, King David was far from perfect, and he did some
horrific things.[1]
Yet when he realized that he had sinned, he repented wholeheartedly... with no
denials, no excuses, no minimization, and no blaming. He didn't go all
"Saul" on the corrective message or the messenger. How do we respond
when the Holy Spirit convicts us that we have sinned? Psalm 51 is a great
primer on how to confess and repent.
How
do we handle guilt over our actions, inactions, attitudes, and thoughts? Do we
cover it up or switch to a fight or flight reaction? Or do we realize that God
knows the deep truth about us and that the best response is to confess? The
reality of our failures is that there will come a time when they can be denied
no longer. It is far better to be a quick confessor!
Confession
(v. 3-4)
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In
verses 5-6, David owned up to his systemic fallenness. Allow me to paraphrase, “I
have a sinful nature; it seems that even as an infant I was not sinless, yet
you teach me wisdom in my heart/inward being (v.5-6). He knew that God doesn’t
wait for perfection before he gets involved in our lives but walks with us and
teaches us along the way… if we have ears to hear.
David
knew that he had sinned against the heart of God and taken from others that
which he could not give back. Yet, because he valued his walk with God he came
to God in this prayer of faith and deep humility and asked some honest requests.
Petition:
Requests he asked of God…
Photo by Jack Sharp on Unsplash |
Blot out my transgressions (v.1d,9)
Wash me thoroughly (v. 2, 7)
Purge and
cleanse me (v.7)
These three requests are all in one accord, asking for the same thing. David wanted to be clean inside and out. While used in parallel, we might see subtle variations on a theme. He wanted to be set free from the guilt of what he had done, washed from all the lingering external residue, and even deep-cleaned on the inside cutting off sin at its root, a prideful heart.
All he experienced until the Lord forgave and restored him was the opposite of joy, but in hope, he prayed, “Let me hear joy and gladness” (for I am consumed with sorrow and regret). David knew something about a right relationship with God—it is the source of joy. As people who have received forgiveness through Jesus Christ, we too should lean into the joy and gladness of the Holy Spirit.
Finally,
David humbly asked for healing as he confessed his brokenness (v.8) As a
shepherd, David knew that sometimes a shepherd must break the leg of a
wandering sheep of its own good. During the recovery time, they are always in
the presence of the shepherd and learn that life is better there than wandering
among wolves and lions.
Then
David wrote/prayed the well-known words that many of us have fervently sung as
well as prayed down through the centuries,
Create in me a clean
heart, O God,
and renew
a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your
presence,
and
take not your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of
your salvation,
and
uphold me with a willing spirit. (v.10-12)
These
three short verses encapsulate the cries of the hearts of all who not only know
and mourn their sins but who also know the God who is “slow to anger and
abounding in loving-kindness.” What might seem at first to be six densely
packed requests are three pairings of parallel requests.
In
the first pairing, David asked God to create and renew a clean heart/right
spirit “within me” where he only knew the stain of his sins and the wrong
thinking and sorrow they produced. In the third pairing, we see that the
restoration of the joy of salvation (echoing v. 8) is tied to a willing spirit
that upholds us in difficulty.
While
I can personally relate to David repeatedly asking for cleansing, and renewed
joy, it is the relational request of the middle pairing (v.11) that captures my
heart this week.
Cast me not away from your
presence,
and
take not your Holy Spirit from me.
(v.11)
I propose that neither of the other pairings are possible without the Lord granting this request. Even if we
were cleansed, we could not hope to remain so if God removed his presence from
us. Not only that but what enduring joy could we have apart from the Spirit?
This might not seem important to us because we often undervalue the Holy
Spirit. However, David knew what happened to his predecessor—Saul—when because
of his stubborn heart and refusal to confess his sin, God had removed his
Spirit from him (1 Sam. 16:14). David had witnessed Saul’s torment, jealousy,
and fits of homicidal madness all too often. He would not have wanted to be
like Saul, and I am sure that such memories added to the intensity of his plea.
Thankfully, the Lord doesn’t
merely dole out heavenly currency to meet our needs, he gives us his very self!
The presence of the Lord is life
(1 John 5:11-12).
This psalm is a
blessing for those who know they have sinned and long to be right with God. It
not only gives us the language to bare our soul before the Lord, but it is also
a prayer that God answered for David (the psalmist) and will answer for us
today through Jesus Christ! But having been forgiven, will we teach others
God's ways, or will we return to our own?
Declaration
Right
after this prayer of petition, there is a pledge of faithful living from then on. David declared what he would do upon being cleansed, kept close, and
restored to the joy of salvation. He would be an example for others to follow. Something he could not be without the inclusion of both his failures
and his repentant faithfulness. He planned to sing aloud and declare God’s
praise. Recently on a church worship and prayer night, we sang Cody Carnes’
song Bless God, which includes these lyrics,
Sing if you've known His grace
Come on and lift up your holy hands
He's worthy of all our praise.
Bless God in
the sanctuary
Bless God in the fields of plenty
Bless God in the darkest valley
Every chance I get
I bless Your name.
This is exactly what David said he would do upon experiencing
such desperately needed grace. The Lord
doesn’t long to smell more burning meat on the sacrificial altar’s grill. He
desires a different type of sacrifice—that of “a broken and contrite heart”
(v.17).
What is the sign of such a sacrificial heart? It is
confession. Instead of walking the path of rationalization, minimization, and
deflection, a contrite heart admits its moments of weakness, acts of
disobedience, and attitudes of independence and rebellion.
A
dozen years ago I commented on this psalm, “In this great psalm of repentance,
David acknowledged the kind of sacrifice God accepts...a broken and contrite
heart. Such hearts like his are in short supply these days having lost their
shelf space to more popular and less helpful indulgences like denial, pride,
excuses, pride, technical confession without remorse, and did I mention pride?”
The Holy Spirit Draws Us Back to Jesus
If we have not grown hard of heart and calloused of
conscience when we become aware of our sin, our guilty hearts often hear two
voices speak—one condemns and the other convicts. We do well to learn the
difference.
Condemnation is the voice of the accuser speaking to our fears and shame warning us to get as far away from the angry, judgmental, punitive God as we can, for we no longer deserve his love, and he doesn’t want anything to do with us. Remember that the accuser—Satan—is the father of lies.
The other voice is that of conviction. Conviction
is the voice of the Holy Spirit reminding us that we can’t save ourselves and
that we need to get to Jesus Christ, the lover of our soul, as quickly as we
can, for Jesus is our light, life, and everlasting hope! John tells it straight,
Come unto me... |
If we are sorry for our
sin, and don’t merely turn away from a harmful attitude or behavior but
return
to our merciful Lord Jesus we should have no fear that the Holy Spirit will be
taken from us.
Remember that God is greater than our hearts (1 John 3:20), so today, instead of self-condemnation, take time to thank the Lord for the forgiveness and cleansing he has given to us! David did.
[1] [Note:
the regular inclusion of the faults and sins of “heroic” biblical characters is
solid evidence that the Bible is not propaganda but a true historical narrative.]