Friday, February 23, 2007

Psalm 51 (The Message)
1-3Generous in love—God, give grace! Huge in mercy—wipe out my bad record. Scrub away my guilt, soak out my sins in your laundry. I know how bad I've been; my sins are staring me down. 4-6 You're the One I've violated, and you've seen it all, seen the full extent of my evil. You have all the facts before you; whatever you decide about me is fair. I've been out of step with you for a long time, in the wrong since before I was born. What you're after is truth from the inside out. Enter me, then; conceive a new, true life. 7-15 Soak me in your laundry and I'll come out clean, scrub me and I'll have a snow-white life. Tune me in to foot-tapping songs, set these once-broken bones to dancing. Don't look too close for blemishes, give me a clean bill of health. God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life. Don't throw me out with the trash, or fail to breathe holiness in me. Bring me back from gray exile, put a fresh wind in my sails! Give me a job teaching rebels your ways so the lost can find their way home. Commute my death sentence, God, my salvation God, and I'll sing anthems to your life-giving ways. Unbutton my lips, dear God; I'll let loose with your praise. 16-17 Going through the motions doesn't please you, a flawless performance is nothing to you. I learned God-worship when my pride was shattered. Heart-shattered lives ready for love don't for a moment escape God's notice.

We believe that David wrote this psalm after he had an affair with Bathsheba. David was king over the people of Israel. He stayed home once, while he was supposed to be out fighting in a war. While he was home he saw Bathsheba and he thought she was beautiful. Since he was the king and had the power to do whatever he wanted, he had her brought to him, and he had sex with her, even though he knew she was already married to one of his soldiers. After that, everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. Bathsheba found herself pregnant with David’s baby, and David had her husband killed in order to try and cover his tracks. The baby did not live very long; it died a few days after being born.
David tried to hide these big sins. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, that did not work. God sent the prophet Nathan to David on God’s behalf. God had Nathan confront David over his sins. Nathan told David that God would forgive David’s sin, but there were consequences to his actions. You can read the story for yourself in 2 Samuel 11 and 12.
We can tell from David’s psalm that he felt remorse for his actions. He was guilty and he knew it. Yet he also recognized that God was merciful and had, as the TNIV translates “unfailing love.” David knew that God could cleanse him of sin; God could get rid of his dirty laundry. David also knew that God does not desire our going through the motions and routine offerings. No, what God wants are our true selves, especially when we come to him broken and sorry for what we have done. Coming to God when our lives are empty and broken, when we know we cannot do anything on our own, is a pleasing act of sacrifice.

Psalm 51 (TNIV)
17 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.

Everybody, like David, makes wrong choices and ends up trapped in their own sins. Sometimes it makes us sick to think about the wrong things we have done and how everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Maybe we have not slept with someone else’s spouse and then ordered a murder, but we have sinned against God in many more ways than we would like to admit.
Read Psalm 51 again. Confess your sins along with David in verses 1-6. Ask God to cleanse you like David did in verses 7-9. Then ask God to renew you, to “Create in me a pure heart, O God…” to stay with you, and restore your relationship with Him (10-12). Be assured that He will. And like David sings in verses 13-17, praise God for giving you new life, for always forgiving, and for his unfailing love.