Forgiveness and Restoration

Forgiveness And Restoration

Psalm 51

Theme: Prayers of personal confession and repentance allow God to restore us and equip us for service.

Introduction

In 1989, using the findings of the Dowd report, Bart Giamatti, the commissioner of baseball, imposed a life time ban from the game on Pete Rose.  The report concluded that Rose, arguably one of the greatest players of all time, had bet on baseball games.  Gambling by those taking part in the games is dealt with quickly and harshly because it compromises the integrity of the sport.

Although Rose formally accepted the findings of the report, he argued that he had bet on football and horse racing, but never on baseball.  Finally, in January of 2004, after some 14 years of denials, Rose changed his story.  Hoping to have the punishment lifted so he might be inducted into the Hall of Fame, Rose publicly admitted he had bet on baseball.

Most surprising about his admission was his decided lack of contrition.  In his own words from his book My Prison Without Bars:

I'm sure that I'm supposed to act all sorry or sad or guilty now that I've accepted that I've done something wrong. But you see, I'm just not built that way. So let's leave it like this: I'm sorry it happened, and I'm sorry for all the people, fans and family that it hurt. Let's move on.

To truly find forgiveness and restoration, a person must first believe that they need it.  But, our therapeutic culture too often provides us with easy ways to push the responsibility for our actions onto others.  Our family, our friends, our environment can all be used as convenient scapegoats for our own errors, mistakes and sins.

Rose’s non-apologetic apology is emblematic of a societal tendency to minimize or blame others for our own failings.  It is an alarming trend, because a failure to see the need for personal forgiveness is a symptom of the spiritually dead.

Faced with the great sin of his life, David’s prayer preserved in Psalm 51 reveals that despite his personal failure he is a spiritually alive individual.  Nathan has forced David to face his abuse of power to obtain Bathsheba.  David had not only committed adultery with Uriah’s wife, but also sent his general to certain death at the front line.  By eliminating her husband, the path was clear for the king to marry Bathsheba.  Juxtaposed with the shallow words of Rose, King David’s response to being confronted with his own sinfulness is direct and honest.  Contained within his heart-felt communication with God lies the secret to true forgiveness and restoration.

The Biblical Witness

Psalm 51:1-6

Amazing Grace

¹ Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.

² Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

³ For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.

⁴ Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.

⁵ Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.

⁶ You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.

David begins his prayer by asking for mercy.  It is a plea without equivocation.  It is not a posture we are familiar with in modern society.  Every part of us wants to protect ourselves and show our strength.  To need mercy is to admit weakness.

In our culture, we have mastered the apology that simultaneously blames the person from whom we seek forgiveness.  “I’m sorry if anyone was offended.”  If you just wouldn’t have been so sensitive, I would have nothing to be sorry about.  In a sly way, this sort of apology avoids taking responsibility.

Or, we hide behind the circumstances.  “I’m sorry, but” is followed by a rationalization that minimizes our guilt.  It is a way of saying that if you had been in my situation, you would have done the same thing.  Forgiveness is not necessary because I was forced into the hurtful action.

David’s plea is naked and raw.  He accepts his responsibility for his sin and asks God to provide him with grace.  Blotting out is the language of commerce and refers to the forgiveness of a debt.  The imagery of washing has always symbolized the power of spiritual cleansing and is a part of the meaning of baptism.  David does not believe that there is anything he can do to undo or make right his sinful action.  He throws himself at God’s feet and asks forgiveness.

In Edgar Allen Poe’s story, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator commits what he believes to be the perfect crime.  The only problem is that as he sits above the hidden body, his sense of guilt generates the sound of a beating heart that raises in volume until he confesses.  It is this inability to drown out the shame of his action that causes David’s sin to be always before him.  David’s relationship with God will not allow him to easily pass over his own sinfulness.

Verse 4 has a jarring effect.  “Against you alone have I sinned.”  But what about Bathsheba and more significantly Uriah?  Hasn’t David sinned against them?  Hasn’t the King’s actions destroyed their lives?  The psalm suggests that there is a difference between sin and a crime.  When a person goes before a judge, they are convicted of a crime, not a sin.  Crimes are committed against people.  Sin may involve other people, but it is always a transgression against God’s purposes.  David does need to seek forgiveness from people for his hurtful actions, but only God can forgive his sin.

When David writes that he was born guilty, it might be taken as a fatalistic Calvinism.  It also can be understood, perhaps more helpfully, as an admission that he was born with the potential to sin.  He was born a sinner not in the sense that he was born with black hair or blue eyes, but in the way that we say that a person was a born writer or athlete.

God’s desire for us is that our inward lives and outward actions are integrated into a single way of life.  David’s sin was secret to most of the world.  God, however, does not seek the façade of righteousness in his followers but a heart that is an open secret to the world.

Psalm 51:7-12

Transforming Power

⁷ Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

⁸ Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.

⁹ Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.

¹⁰ Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.

¹¹ Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me.

¹² Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.

David continues his prayer with more images of cleansing.  He desires to be clean and whiter than snow.  He asks that God will cleanse him with hyssop.  Hyssop plays a prominent role in the Passover preparation described in Exodus 12.  Moses instructs the Israelites to use blood coated hyssop to mark their doors so that when the Lord arrives to strike down the Egyptian first-born their own children would be spared.  According to Hebrews, when Moses sprinkles the blood on the people to formally seal their relationship with God, hyssop is used. These uses of the plant confirm that David is asking God to shield him from God’s judgment and to give him a fresh start.

The joy and gladness that David hopes to experience again is not something he can generate on his own.  His prayer reveals that he is not seeking to rectify his life by his own effort.  He believes that only God can rectify his life.  When he refers to his bones that God has crushed, it is not a way to blame God, but a recognition that ignoring God’s standards has profound consequences.  These consequences are obvious to those who seek to maintain a dynamic spiritual relationship, less obvious but equally dire for those who ignore the divine.

Because David cares about his relationship to God, he is aware that his sin has created separation.  He also is aware that it is God who must reach across that barrier to renew his heart.

I will always remember when I spoke out of turn and hurt a friend.  I wrote a heart felt apology note, and we had a long talk.  What struck me in that moment of seeking forgiveness was how out of control I was.  No matter what I said or did, or how badly I desired it, forgiveness was only available if offered to me.  I knew that if my friend could see into the depths of my heart to my remorse they would have to respond, but I could not create forgiveness for myself.

David seems to stand on that precipice.  He knows that forgiveness and restoration are not his to make or take.  They are in God’s hand and his only hope is to open the brokenness of his heart and trust in God’s transforming power.

Psalm 51:13-17

Delivered to Declare

¹³ Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.

¹⁴ Deliver me from bloodshed, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.

¹⁵ O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.

¹⁶ For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.

¹⁷ The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

While David is unable to manufacture his forgiveness, he rightly discerns that when forgiveness is offered he must respond.  There is some news that is too good to keep.  His relief and joy at God’s graciousness constrains him to share.

At this point in the Psalm, a significant shift occurs.  While the earlier parts of the prayer are primarily individually centered, David’s prayer begins to broaden in scope to the needs of the world.  Too often our own prayers never move beyond our own narrow concerns.  David recognizes that God’s forgiveness is not a private and personal matter, but a reason to be vocal about God’s grace to others who need to find it for themselves.

David will teach, sing, and speak of what he has received.  In every way that he can think of, he will tell others that God’s forgiveness is available for the asking.  The content of his message of hopefulness is that the rituals of repentance (burnt offerings) without contrition of the heart are merely an empty show.  Having experienced the renewing of his heart through God’s forgiveness, he recognizes that God’s interest is in transforming our relationship with God rather than appeasing God through sacrifices.

Psalm 51:18-19

Restored To Worship

¹⁸ Do good to Zion in your good pleasure; rebuild the walls of Jerusalem,

¹⁹ then you will delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.

The final verses of David’s prayer of repentance have caused a debate about whether they were a part of the original psalm.  They seem to point to a later time after the exile.  Jerusalem’s walls would not have needed to be rebuilt during the time of David’s kingship.  However, the language could be taken as a symbolic description of God renewing his protection of the holy city following the contrition of its king.

In a lesson for our own praying, through the progression of this prayer, David disappears.  The first verses are filled with the first person.  The focus then becomes on what David will do once he has been restored.  But the last two verses contain no first person reference.  David’s personal prayer ends not with his own need but with a request for the good of the people.

While verse 16 declares that God does not delight in sacrifice, verse 19 suggests that once the heart is right that God will delight in sacrifice.  This reminds us that forgiveness and restoration are not the end of the process.  They are the beginning of a transformed life that is lived in the service of God and others.

Application

Following the recent death of Pope John Paul II, there was a surprising news story that circulated.  In 1981, Mehmet Ali Agca attempted to kill John Paul.  The Pope forgave the Turkish gunman for the attack.  He not only forgave him but visited him in prison and established a relationship with his attacker and his attacker’s family.  When asked for comment after the Pope’s death, Agca’s brother said, “I know that he (Mehmet) is in mourning . . . Would not you be sad if you had lost your brother.” (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1376901/posts)

The forgiveness of the Pope changed an attacker seeking his death into one who mourned him as if he were a member of his family.  To us, this sort of forgiveness seems beyond our ability.  But John Paul could offer true forgiveness and restoration because he had received true forgiveness and restoration from God.

Psalm 51 provides a powerful model that corrects our narcissistic tendency to excuse our own sinfulness.  David’s prayer provides an example of taking responsibility for our relationship with God.

One purpose of prayer is to restore our relationship with God when it has become broken by our own sin.  Those who seek to live in close contact with God can not help but be aware of their failure as covenant partners.

What can we learn from David’s prayer about forgiveness?

1. Until we acknowledge our need for forgiveness, it is always out of reach.  David does not pray until he recognizes his sin.  We need to be vigilant in our lives so that we don’t gloss over our sin and not see our own need for forgiveness.

2. We must realize that our sin has serious consequences for ourselves.  We tend to think that our sin only affects others.  David’s prayer reveals that our sin has serious and continuing consequences in our own lives as we live separated from God.

3. Being forgiven is not the end.  Too often, we assume that once we are forgiven that the process is through.  David knew that receiving forgiveness demands announcing it and offering it to others.  Living out of forgiveness means living a life of grateful service.

Written by Bob Fox, Pastor, Faith Baptist Church, Georgetown, Kentucky.

Humility

Humility

During this Lenten season, we have spent time each week considering the seven Christian virtues.  We have in turn focused on chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience and kindness.  These simple concepts are marked in some ways by how archaic they sound.  We have stepped away from the concern of the production of virtue and instead concerned ourselves with the production of wealth.  Education is not undertaken as it once was in the liberal arts to nurture the process of creating good human beings to focusing instead on creating a marketable person who can find employment.  To speak of chastity or temperance truly sounds as if words are being channeled from another age.  In order to appear relevant and modern, even the church has moved away from seeking to produce virtue and has instead tried to make its life meet the felt needs of its people.

The final of the seven Christian virtues is humility.  One only needs to look at the sham that is modern resume writing to see that humility is seen as a bygone virtue of another age.  We live in the age of self-promotion, self-agrandizement and self-esteem.  When we speak of humble, it tends to be a negative.  This person or that gets their comeuppance and they are “humbled.”  When we get the best of someone else they are humiliated.  We have turned what the church has considered one of the seven most important virtues into either a quaint nostalgia or not a virtue at all.

The word humble means literally modesty or lowness.  The word itself comes from the Latin word “humus” which means earth.  To be humble is to identify with the ground beneath your feet.  As a spiritual virtue, it is to remember that from dust we have come, to dust we will return.  As a spiritual virtue, it is to remember that we all have feet of clay.  As a Christian Virtue, humility is most precisely the recognition of three truths.  First, that God is perfect—thus not of earth.  Second that others often have skills we lack.  And finally that we are imperfect and ought to submit to God.

Humility is not self-deprecation, which is often merely a disguise for a sizable ego.  In an effort to win praise, we act as if we aren’t able just so that others will tell us how wonderful we are.  True humility is an accurate understanding of the self, neither too high or too low an assessment of who we are.  C.S. Lewis suggests:  Humility is not thinking less of yourself its thinking of yourself less.  Frederick Buechner puts it in the following way:  True humility doesn't consist of thinking ill of yourself but of not thinking of yourself much differently from the way you'd be apt to think of anybody else.

It is appropriate that on the day we consider the virtue of humility, the church celebrates the final meal and Jesus washing his disciples feet.  Imagine for a moment, Jesus, God in  human flesh, kneeling before each of his disciples.  What other picture is necessary to communicate humility.  If Jesus would wash the earth off the feet of his followers, how can we do anything other than wash the earth off each other’s feet.

We will let St. Augustine have the final word.  A reminder that until we are ready to embrace our earthiness we will never approach heaven.  He writes, “ Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.”

Prayer For Teachers

Lord,

We pause this day and give thanks for those who have taught us the words to share our thanks. Teaching us simple words like cat and dog, they helped us to name our world.  They exposed us to the infinite with those finite words and with them we describe Your hand in creation and struggle with the strangeness and mystery of grace.  Teaching us arithmetic, they gave us the tools to count our blessings.  And so today as we offer thanks for those who have educated us, we ask your blessings upon those who shape our minds and hearts through the school.

Bless the bus drivers.  Help them to be safe.  Grant them concentration in the midst of the confusion of noise and clamor.  Give the grace to deal with demanding parents, a tight schedule and inattentive drivers in a dangerous hurry.

Bless the teachers, all of them, those who believe and those who doubt.  Help them to be sensitive to the needs of their students.  Most importantly, lead them to care for those children who have no one else to care for them.  Help them embody love and grace.  Do not let them forget in the midst of meetings, curriculum and papers that they hold the future in their hands.  Let them wipe noses and teach calculus with compassion.

Bless the school staff.  Help them to view their days of toil not as jobs but as callings.  Let their essential work help the schools to focus more clearly on each student.  Give them a sense of the value and importance of each moment, no matter how mundane.

Bless the lunchroom workers.  As they chop, cut, knead, bake and serve, let them do so in the light of your love.  They meet the most basic needs of the body so minds can be educated and the language of the soul can be learned. 

Bless the administrators.  Give them the insight to handle the challenges of each day.  Help them create safe and curious centers for learning.  Let them judge with grace and wisdom. 

Bless our children by blessing those who lead, educate and serve them.

Amen

Mature Faith--Lesson

Mature Faith

James 2:1-8

Theme: Authentic Christian faith both forces us and equips us to make difficult choices.

Introduction

My friend Mark is in his early 50’s.  He has recently experienced a spiritual awakening.  He describes it this way.  “Before, I was a depressed, cynical person.  Now I am as happy as I have ever been.  I don’t take anything for granted.  I treasure every moment as a gift from God.”

What caused this new found joy?  What made such a 180 degree turn in his life occur?  His terminal cancer diagnosis.

I don’t know how I would respond to that kind of news.  What would I do if a doctor came and told me that lung cancer was rapidly and aggressively stealing my life, and I might not see my children graduate?  How would you respond?  In the easy world of the hypothetical, I can claim that I would take the news as Mark has.  In the harder real world of unexpected and unexplainable trial, I can’t be sure until I face it.

In a church I pastored, there were two older couples both of whom had lost a child in tragic circumstances.  For one couple, it was the beginning of a life of bitterness, anger and outrage.  For the other, they became more compassionate, empathetic and caring.  What was the difference?  Why did they react so differently to similar difficulty?

A married couple I know had a revealing conversation.  The wife told the husband that she really admired an elderly lady they both knew.  “I hope that I will be like her when I get to be her age,” she told him. Her husband jokingly told her, “I’m pretty sure you won’t be.”  She asked him, “Why not?”  His answer revealed equal parts deep wisdom and the total absence of a desire for self-preservation.  “You won’t be like her when you get older unless you start to be more like her now.”

It is common wisdom that trials develop character.  But equally important and less articulated is that trials reveal character that is already present.  When life is easy, it is not very difficult to proclaim faith.  Far from the fray of real life, it is easy to be brave and to make proud declaration.  Within the protective walls of the church at 11 AM on Sunday, pietistic displays of faith are simple.  Shallow trust is all we need when everything is going our way.  Faith that supports us in the hospital waiting room, the unemployment line, the valley of the shadow is a more valuable commodity.  When troubles come and dig at the foundation of life, the true root of mature, complete faith or lack of it is evident.

A mature faith has an integrated voice that sounds the same notes of confidence in good times and in bad.  How does one nurture this sort of constant and perfected faith?

The Biblical Witness

James 1:2

Joy in Trials

²My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy,

Some years ago now, Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote the book When Bad Things Happen To Good People.  The bestseller addressed the simple question, “Why do trials come to people who are doing their best to live the right way?”  It is a question that has troubled people of faith throughout the centuries.  Are trials the result of secret sin?  Does God create the trials for growth?  Are trials the unavoidable consequence of a universe that allows human choice?

James does not address these questions.  His is an imminently practical address to Christians.  Trials and troubles are simply a fact of life.  To debate their reason for existence is an academic question.  The real question is the pragmatic one.  If trials and troubles are part of our existence how should we handle them?

“Consider it nothing but joy.”  These words of exhortation seem cold comfort to one in the middle of trials.  But there is an important distinction that should be made.  James does not advise us to be happy during trials, but to have joy.

The word “happy” has the same English root as the word “happen.”  Happiness is dependent upon what happens to you.  In the trials that come to all Christians, we are not asked to be happy about them.  Rather we are instructed to have joy, a condition that is not situation dependent.  To have joy is to know that no matter what happens, God is present with us.  A mature faith provides joy even in the midst of trials.

James 1:3-4

The Full Effect

³because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; ⁴and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.

After exhorting his readers to experience joy in the midst of trials, James explains why this is the reaction of mature faith.  Faith when tested produces endurance.  A runner does not go to a race without training.  Through progressive training, the athlete develops the ability to go faster and longer.  The building up of muscles and the increasing of the ability of the lungs to provide oxygen are augmented through repetition of the skills that ultimately will be used in the race.

Faith uses a similar mechanism to produce endurance.  By responding with faith in a consistent manner throughout one’s life, strength is developed to meet the most difficult struggles with an enduring faith.  Christian character is developed by trials, but equally important, the habits of faith that emerge in trials reveal the foundation that has already been prepared.

The purpose of endurance is to show a complete and mature faith.  Some older translations used the word “perfect”.  All of us would agree that a person’s faith can not be perfect in the sense that it is free from defect, because we are all imperfect humans.  It means rather that the faith that carries us at the beginning will, if it is mature, carry us through to the end.  “Perfect” faith is the one that accomplishes what it sets out to do, carrying a person through to the finish.

James 1:5

Asking God

⁵If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you.

This seems a rather abrupt transition.  From a discussion of faith and endurance, James leaps to the question of a lack of wisdom.  With the Jewish tradition from which he draws, James affirms that wisdom is not a human quality to be developed but one that is conferred on those who seek it by God.

Perhaps James here has paused to consider what his words must sound like to those who hear them.  Taking joy in trials because they produce enduring faith may make sense to some but to many it probably sounds foolish.  We spend most of our life avoiding unpleasant experiences at whatever cost.  We want to live a life free of complication and trouble.  Our response to trials is to do whatever is necessary to get away from them, not take joy in them.  We do not pray for trials, we pray for their end.

But James is promoting an entirely different world view.  The greatest good is not a trouble free existence but a faith filled existence.  The world’s wisdom is that pain is to be avoided.  God’s wisdom is that even pain helps us on our journey.

James 1:6-8

Asking In Faith

⁶But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind; ⁷for the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, ⁸must not expect to receive anything from the Lord.

These particular verses have often been ripped from their context and used to promote an ego-centric Christian faith that names and claims blessings from God.  It is quite ironic that the overall context of the passage is about trials and their value, but many remove these verses to argue that God wants us to have an easy life without troubles.

Those who misuse these verses also fail to note that what is being asked for from God is not any material object, but wisdom.  James is not promising that if you ask for a new car without doubt that it will be given to you.  He instructs to ask for wisdom and God will give it to you.  But in that asking, one must be careful not to try to keep one foot in the “real” world.  Often we want to rely on God’s wisdom when it squares with our own and to reject it when it doesn’t make sense to us.  James tells us that it is a stark choice, either God’s way or not, there is no middle path.  Many of us are not comfortable with those terms we want to have faith in God and faith in ourselves and our own judgments.

It is not doubt in general that is condemned here, rather it is a particular doubt that wants to live a life of faith, but is unwilling to do it on God’s terms.  An immature faith requires everything to go on without difficulty.  When trials arise, that faith is abandoned for some other way that promises that pain will be avoided.  This sort of double-mindedness sees faith as useful only when it provides us what we immediately desire. 

The language of the waves that James uses here is very rare for the New Testament.  Talk of the sea is not common in Jewish circles.  They were not a sea-faring people and believed that the land and sea were in constant struggle with each other.  The dry ground represented the forces of order and good, while the sea was destructive chaos.  James draws on these cultural understandings to emphasize that doubt creates destructive chaos in the life of the believer.  By abandoning faith in the midst of trials, the double-minded person jumps from the boat that provides protection directly into the turbulent sea that will destroy them.

Application

I came across a story some years ago now.  It is about a man and a friend who were walking in the market place.  The man was the most wicked person in town. Across the way, they saw a beautiful woman.  “I will marry her!” the man said.  His friend told him, “A person as beautiful as she will never have a wretch like you.”  The conniving evil man decided that the only way he might stand a chance with the woman would be to wear the mask of a good and righteous man.  Wearing the mask he approached the woman, and they fell in love.  They wed and lived a blissful life together.  One day the wicked man’s friend came back to the town and heard what had happened.  He went to the woman and told her that her husband was not what he seemed.  The woman confronted her husband.  The wicked man broke down in tears.  He apologized to her and pulled off the mask to show her who he really was.  He pulled off the mask of the good and righteous face and revealed what was hidden beneath it, a good and righteous face.

Faith is like that mask.  It is a habit of being that we assume when we become Christian.  The daily practice of it causes our very centers to be reshaped.  The enduring, perfect mature faith is revealed when the veneer of our lives is pulled back by the trials of our lives.

How can we develop a more than skin deep faith?  How can the words we use on Sunday become the truth we live everyday?

1.  Faith grows when we recognize that it is not a protection from trials but a support through trials.

2.  Faith grows when we recognize that trials are opportunities to express and strengthen our faith.

3.  Faith grows when we live out of the wisdom of God rather than double-mindedness.

4.  Faith grows to maturity when it becomes the primary reality out of which a believer lives.

One day, we will be asked to pull off the mask of faith and reveal our true identities.  Will it be a thin and immature veneer or will it have changed us to the core of our being?