One of the great things about this country is the way it can endure scandal and survive. Consider a few examples. John Adams accused Ben Franklin of wasteful living during the Revolution, complaining that he spent $50,000 a year out of the War Chest as ambassador to France. Franklin said he was wining and dining the French to gather their support. Later, Adams himself, one of my personal heroes, was accused of paying a bribe to a representative of the French Government. He said it was for the same purpose, to keep us out of war. Then Jefferson was accused of having children with a slave girl named Sally Hemings. Ulysses S. Grant was accused of a tax evasion scheme. Warren G. Harding was implicated in the Teapot Dome Scandal—-which was all about the oil, in Wyoming. King David endured scandal, too. Yet he was known as a man after God’s heart.
Finding Hope Again
1 To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came to David after he had gone in to Bathsheba. Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy steadfast love; according to thy 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 thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done that which is evil in thy sight, so that thou art justified in thy sentence and blameless in thy judgment. 5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. 6 Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. 7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. 8 Fill me with joy and gladness; let the bones which thou hast broken rejoice. 9 Hide thy 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 Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. 13 Then I will teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners will return to thee. 14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of thy deliverance. 15 O Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth thy praise. 16 For thou hast no delight in sacrifice; were I to give a burnt offering, thou wouldst not be pleased. 17 The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Psalm 51:1-19
One of the great things about this country is the way it can endure scandal and survive. Consider a few examples. John Adams accused Ben Franklin of wasteful living during the Revolution, complaining that he spent $50,000 a year out of the War Chest as ambassador to France. Franklin said he was wining and dining the French to gather their support. Later, Adams himself, one of my personal heroes, was accused of paying a bribe to a representative of the French Government. He said tt was for the same purpose, to keep us out of war. Then Jefferson was accused of having children with a slave girl named Sally Hemings. Ulysses S. Grant was accused of a tax evasion scheme. Warren G. Harding was implicated in the Teapot Dome Scandal—-which was all about the oil, in Wyoming. I have seen many scandals in my own lifetime. They say that JFK loved Marilyn Monroe. Then there was Watergate. According to Jeb Stuart McGruder, President Nixon knew about the Watergate burglary from the beginning. Nixon died saying he knew only about the cover-up. I went to Princeton Seminary with Jeb. He repented of his political crimes, and became a Presbyterian minister. When I was at the Marine Corps Basic School in Quantico, Virginia one of my instructors was Captain Oliver North. He was right in the middle of the Iran/Contra Scandal. We sold arms to Iran to fund the Contras. Did you know that many of the Contra’s were Miskito Indians who just happened to be Moravians? Then there was a little thing called Whitewater. Then Bill Clinton said he did not have sex with a White House aid, but it turned out that he was fine-tuning the truth. More recently Congressman Mark Foley used email to solicit sex from former congressional pages. Attorney General Gonzales was accused of politicizing the Justice Department. Senator Craig was busted for soliciting sex in a men’s room. The list is long—and I have left many out.
The truth is that all of these politicians have one thing in common. It is not that they are Republicans, or Democrats. They are both. I even mentioned a Federalist or two. It is not that they are all politicians. Politicians are no worse and no better than the rest of us. Rather, they are all human. “There was simply too much human in the being.”
The Bible has its share of scandals. David was the greatest of Israel’s kings, but his administration was tainted with scandal, including adultery and murder. Perhaps you remember how David saw Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, taking a bath on the top of her house, and plotted to seduce her. Or was it the other way around? Anyway, it happened, and she turned up pregnant. David tried to cover-up his indiscretion with Bathsheba. So David summoned her husband Uriah home from the battle so he might lie with his own wife, and think himself the father of David’s child. It did not work. Uriah was a real leader. He refused to go into his wife while his men were still in battle. He slept on his doorstep. David compounded his crime. In desperation, he ordered Uriah to the forefront of the battle so that he might be killed. Uriah followed orders. He was killed. After his death, and after a proper period of mourning, David took Bathsheba to be his own wife. He had what he wanted, and he thought that his cover-up had worked. It had not.
Nixon had Woodward and Bernstein. David had Nathan. Woodward and Bernstein had a source code-name, “Deep Throat.” Nathan had a source, too. He was a prophet of the Lord God of Israel. When Nathan had all the facts of the scandal to his own satisfaction, he went to David to confront him. At first Nathan did not challenge David directly. Instead he told him a heart-wrenching story about two men who lived in the same town. One was rich, with flocks and herds. The other was poor. He had only a single yew, lamb, which he made into a pet. That lamb ate from his plate, and drank from his cup. He was like a member of the poor man’s family. Then a guest dropped in on the rich man. The rich man was loath to kill an animal from his own flock, so he stole the poor man’s little lamb, killed it, boiled it, made it into a meal, and served it up.
When David heard that story he was incensed. He said to Nathan, “That man deserves to die.” David did not sentence the man to death, but he did order that the rich man restore that lamb to his poor neighbor “fourfold.”
Then Nathan pointed a bony finger at David and said, “You are the man.” He went on to speak for the Lord saying, I anointed you king over Israel, and delivered you from the hand of Saul, and gave you your master’s house, and your master’s wives. I would have given you anything…but that was not enough. You despised the word of the Lord, and did what was evil in his sight. Nathan then prophesied great evil against David. He told David that the sword would not depart from his house, and that he would be publicly embarrassed; but Nathan assured David he would not die.
I wonder what the sentence might have been had David condemned the rich man to die for taking the poor man’s ewe?
Psalm 51 is the story of David’s reaction. Notice the stages.
First, he is aware of his sin. In verse 3 and 4 he writes:
3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. 4 Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done that which is evil in thy sight, so that thou art justified in thy sentence and blameless in thy judgment.
David’s sin is not just against Uriah with Bathsheba. It is against God. All sin is against God because God takes the side of the oppressed, the poor, and the downtrodden. God takes the side of our neighbor. Or course, here is the good part, we are a neighbor, too. God takes our side when we are oppressed, persecuted and wronged.
Second, not only is David aware of his particular sin, he is aware that his very nature is sinful. He traces that sinful nature all the way back to his birth. In verse 5 he writes:
5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.
David regards all people as inherently sinful. In Psalm 14:3, quoted by Paul in Romans 3, David says:
They have all gone astray, they are all alike corrupt; there is none that does good, no, not one.
Third, David’s sin has affected his physical health. In verse 8 he writes that he feels so badly it is as if God has “broken his bones.” There are parallels in Psalm 32 that is also attributed to David. I believe it can reasonably be linked to this same incident. In Psalm 32 David writes that when he declared not his sin, “his body wasted away through his groaning all the day long.” He writes that, “God’s hand was heavy upon him, both day and night.” He writes that his “strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.”
David’s suffering has affected his physical health; but it starts in his mind. Here is the progression: David is in perfect fellowship with God, on top of the world. David sins. His fellowship with God is broken. David looses his joy. He sinks into depression. We ought not to be surprised that depression starts in the mind, then works its way into the body. A quick search of the Internet reveals that modern medicine has tied depression to everything from major diseases like heart attack, cancer and diabetes to minor disorders of the skin and digestive tract.
We must be careful here. Depression is not the only cause of illness, nor is it always a contributing factor. Physical disease has many causes. Likewise, we ought to remember that depression is often a physical illness, and sin is not always the cause of depression. Depression can be caused by physical problems. It can be caused by very legitimate emotional problems. One of the best things that you can do when you are more than moderately depressed is to see your family doctor. However, in David’s case, it is obvious that sin is the cause of his depression, and that sin and depression both contributed to his physical ailments.
Larry McMurty once wrote a book called, Duane is Depressed. Well, David was depressed, too; and he wanted his joy back. Twice in Psalm 51 he asks God to give back his joy. In verse 8 he cries out, “Fill me with joy and gladness; let the bones, which thou hast broken rejoice.” Then in verse 12 he prays, “12 Restore to me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.”
Let’s take a minute to compare and contrast joy and depression.
Depression inevitably results when we believe that we have irretrievably lost something. It can be mild or wild. It can be mild. Wake Forrest looses two tough games to Boston College and Nebraska, and fans are mildly depressed; but they recognize they have a good team that was narrowly beaten by two equally good teams. Wake fans hoped for something better, and on Saturday, they got it. Depression can be wild. Consider the depression that follows the death of someone dear. Emily Dickinson addresses this when she wrote:
The bustle in a house the morning after death is the busiest of industries enacted upon this earth;
the sweeping up the heart and putting love away that will not be used again until eternity.
I love that phrase, “…that will not be used again until eternity.” As Christians we have a hope for eternity. Our love will be used again. That which we have lost will be restored to us. Not all have that hope. I have a neighbor who recently lost her father. I asked her, “Do you believe in life after death?” She responded, “He’s gone.” I told her of the hope of the resurrection that is in Jesus Christ, and how I wished she shared a similar confidence.
Of course, even Christians grieve. The difference is that we do not grieve as those who have no hope. Because we believe in a reunion beyond the world we have in time and space, we move forward. Even after a serious loss, gradually, the joy of living returns.
Depression is the result of loosing something. David lost his fellowship with God.
Joy on the other hand is the sense of having gained something. People may have joy simply because the sun is shining in a blue sky, and we are healthy, relatively wealthy, and wise. A duck hunter may know joy because it is cold and wet, and the ducks are flying. A woman is filled with joy because her child is born. Jesus says that joy is so great, most women forget the pangs of labor. Or, a man may know joy simply because he has a windfall. I was once in a restaurant with a man who read his winning lottery number in the newspaper. He whooped and shouted, and offered to buy my lunch. I remember the day I got the call to New Philadelphia Church. The letter from the PEC had come to the office of the church I was serving on a Friday. I was not expecting a call—especially not to New Philadelphia. I put it aside. I did not find it until Tuesday morning. I opened it, read it, and ran up the steps to my house so that I could call my wife with the news. I remember my heart pounding in my ears as my grin spread from ear to ear. I could not believe I had been called here.
I ought to say a word about joy and peace. Joy is peace with its hat in the air. Peace is joy with its arms folded in serenity. We can’t live on a mountaintop. But we can live on a high plain.
David wants to get his health back and David wants to get his joy back, and he knows the only way he can get either is to confess his sin, and ask God’s forgiveness. He asks forgiveness, but he does not stop of forgiveness. He wants God to forget the whole episode. In verse 9 David asks God to hide his face from his sins and forget all his iniquity. He does not want any memory of his indiscretion to color his relationship with God. He wants a blank slate. Not only so, but he wants every trace of the evidence removed so that God’s memory will not be refreshed. In those days murder usually left one’s hands covered with blood. David plotted the murder of Uriah—but his hands were covered in his mind just as surely as Lady Macbeth’s after she had killed the King. In verse 7, David asks God to wash him with a powerful detergent until he is “whiter than snow.” If he were writing today, he would, perhaps say, “God’s I don’t want to be just clean. I want to be Oxyclean!” David wants the clean to be more than just skin deep. He begs God not to take his Holy Spirit away from him. And he asks God to create a clean heart for him—meaning one that is unmarred by sin. Or, a heart that is pruned and trimmed. (See John’s gospel)
Some people say that all of us are born with the taint of original sin, inherited from one generation to the next. Some say that we are born with a “tableau Rousseau,” a blank slate. In this Psalm, David seems to support both views. As a sinner, he traces his sins to the time of his birth and back before the time of his birth. But as one, who hopes in God, he hopes that even after his sin, he can once again have a clean heart, a blank slate on which he write a better history of obedience to God.
Now did David receive forgiveness? By faith, I believe that he did. He had some tough times. His children drove him to distraction. One brother raped a sister. Another brother killed that brother. An adopted son treated him with disdain. David’s sin haunted him. It is ever so. It is not so much that we break the law of God, as that we break ourselves upon the law of God. Yet David went on to have a strong administration. David’s son by Bathsheba, Solomon, ushered in the true Golden Age of Israel history. God can make good come from bad. God can turn the lemons we give him into lemon aid. And, finally, David himself came to be regarded as a type of Christ. In Israel, the only king who is reputedly greater than David, is great David’s Greater Son, whom Christian’s believe to be Jesus of Nazareth, whom God made both Lord and King.
What about us? What must we do to have joy, a clean heart, a fresh start?
First, we must believe that God is and that God is good. In Psalm 14, David says, “the fool says in his heart there is no God.” Some people loose faith when life gets hard. Others lose faith because they want what God does not. If we want forgiveness, it starts with belief. If we have no God, to whom shall we repent? William Jennings Bryant once said, “He who repents toward himself repents up a slippery slope. He who repents toward another repents into the mouth of a raging lion. He who repents toward God repents to the source of all love and goodness.”
Second, we must believe that God has a good plan for us. Through Samuel God anointed David to be king. Thus David trusted his future to God, even in hard times. He trusted God when facing Goliath and when fleeing from Saul. God anoints us in baptism. We are a part of God’s people. Surely we can claim the promise God made to Israel through Jeremiah, saying, “I know what plans I have for you says the Lord, plans for good, and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
Third, we must recognize our sin. David says that God desires truth in the inward being. We must come to terms with our own sins and failures. We must know our sin before we can confess our sin.
Fourth, we must stand ready to obey God. David prayed, “Restore unto me the joy of my salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit.” We may not know what the future holds. We may not know where God’s will may take us. In Psalm 119 David calls God’s Word a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path, but the old lamps he knew cast a tiny circle. We must follow the narrow path where it leads. We start off in one direction, only to go in another. We do not the future. God does. “When you come to a fork in the road,” says Yogi Berra, “take it.” But which fork? God does not require that we know the future. He does require a blank check. God requires of us is a willing heart. It is only the willing heart who will see the fruition of all God’s good plans.
I have a friend who has a sign in his hallway: “I wish I were half the man my dog thinks I am.” Yes, and I wish I were just a fraction of the person that God thinks I am, and declares me to be in Jesus Christ. Don’t you wish something similar for yourself?
Finis
Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.
EverydayCounselor©
New Philadelphia Moravian Church
4440 Country Club Road
Winston-Salem, N.C. 27104