The Sinner’s Prayer

June 27, 2008 in Worth's Sermons by WNG

It was William Jennings Bryan who said that we must be careful to whom we repent:

When we repent toward ourselves, we repent into the mouth of a raging lion. When we repent to others, we repent up a slippery slope. When we repent toward God, we repent to the author of all love and goodness.

Psalm 51

(w/references to 2nd Samuel chapter 11f and Matthew chapter 1)

There is nothing sadder in the history of a nation than the failure of one her leaders, and David was one of the greatest leaders that Israel had ever known. But there are few things more reassuring in the history of our faith, than the thought that God used David in spite of his failure.

I once studied under a professor who told his class that one of the most hopeful verses in all of scripture was found in the first half of the 1st chapter of Matthew’s gospel. We could not believe it. The only thing in the first half of that chapter is a lengthy genealogy—how Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and so on, and so on; and that there were fourteen generations from Abraham to David, and fourteen generations from David to the deportation to Babylon, and fourteen generations from the deportation to Babylon to Christ. My professor smiled as he pointed out a verse that we had overlooked, a verse that, he said, “…carried the full weight of the gospel of grace.” It was verse 6b. It reads: “And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.”

What a verse! David fell, but God forgave him, and raised him up; and his name stands in the most important genealogy of all times as the ancestor of Jesus Christ!

Now, as Christians, like Israel before us, we are fortunate to have in our Bible both a report of David’s sin and restoration, and a confession of David’s failure and redemption.

The report is contained in the book of 2nd Samuel. It records the story of David’s failure in words so straightforward and succinct that they occupy not hundreds of pages, but 3. David’s confession is contained in Psalm 51. Psalm 51 is David’s prayer of repentance, directed not to the people themselves, but through the people to the God whom David has offended.

It begins, “To the Choirmaster. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.”

In other words, this Psalm was written after the “special prosecutor,” a prophet by the name of Nathan, came to David, the King of Israel, and accused him not only of adultery, but also of the abuse of power, of an attempted cover-up, of murder, and of abusing his office as “commander-and-chief” of Israel’s military.

But I am getting ahead of the facts and the story. The external history, contained in 2nd Samuel chapter 11 and following goes like this:

It all began in the spring of the year. It was a time when most kings went off to war. In times past, David himself had gone, sharing the risk with the people he led. But this spring things were different. David sent Joab, his favorite general, and all the other officers and men of Israel off to war, but he himself stayed behind in Jerusalem.

One day he went for a walk on the roof of the palace. Looking down he saw a beautiful woman taking a bath on the roof of her house. He inquired as to her identity, and was told that she was the wife of Uriah the Hittite who was one of his soldiers in the field.

To make a long story short, David sent for Bathsheba; and, when she came to the palace, he slept with her, then sent her home. Bathsheba became pregnant, and sent word about her condition back to David.

That is when the cover-up began. David summoned Uriah from the wars, asked for a report on the action, thanked him for it, and suggested he go home and “wash his feet.” Which is a euphemism for “go take your ease, get cleaned up, and…sleep with your wife.”

But Uriah would not do it. Instead, he stayed in the palace with the rest of David’s servants. When David learned of it, he called for Uriah and asked, “Why did you not go in to your wife?” And Uriah responded in a way that is worthy of any soldier in anytime or place. He said:

The ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths; and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field; shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing.

So, David kept Uriah back from the fighting for two additional days, hoping he would give in, and go in to Bathsheba. He even got Uriah drunk, but Uriah would not violate his oath. David saw at once that Uriah was a good man and a great soldier; but he saw, too, that the die was cast. Because he had committed to the cover-up, he was now prepared to do things, indeed, he felt veritably forced to do things that he would not have thought himself capable of just a few days before….Bathsheba.

And you know the rest of the story. You know how David sent Uriah back to the wars with a note to Joab his commander to send Uriah to the hardest fighting, then, to draw back from him, leaving him alone to face the enemy. In so doing, David killed Uriah as surely as if he had struck him in his sleep with his own sword. Still, after Uriah’s death, he told his officers to press the battle against the Ammonites, hoping that the whole thing would be concealed by the war, and the fighting. Our American president was not the first leader accused of using a military action to divert the eyes of a nation from domestic difficulties.

After the death of Uriah, Bathsheba grieved for her husband. Then David risked the ire of the nation by taking Bathsheba into his house to be one of his wives.

At this point, David thought he had covered-up everything, but there were those who knew. And more importantly, God knew. And God appointed a special prosecutor by the name of Nathan to call that fact to David’s attention.

Now, Nathan was a good and reasonable man. A man as good as David in the days when David was still a good man, a man after God’s own heart. He was also a smart man, and he had a plan. Nathan did not summon a Grand Jury, and call witnesses, and spend the people’s money in a lengthy investigation. Nor did he leak information about David to the Jerusalem press. Instead, he went to him, David, in private with a story about another man who abused the power entrusted to him. He relied upon David’s basic decency to make his case. Nathan told the story something like this.

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 from his plate, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom. It was more than a pet; it was like a daughter to him. Now a traveler came to visit the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him. So he did the unthinkable—-he took the poor man’s lamb, killed it, butchered it and cooked it for the man who had come to visit him.

When Nathan had told his story, David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man. 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.”

And Nathan said to David, “You are the man. Thus says the LORD, ‘I gave you your master’s house, and your master’s wives unto your bosom, but this was not enough….” And then Nathan went on to pronounced God’s judgment. David was to live. And, since he had not been elected by the people, but anointed by God, he was to continue as King. But the child of Bathsheba would die. And, from henceforth, the sword would not depart David’s house, and David’s worst enemies would be members of his own household.

Now some of you think that you have had difficulties with your children. If you are ever in that particular funk, then read about the difficulties that David had with his children, and thank God that you have, at least, been spared those.

It was sometime after Nathan had come to him that David puts his sincere plea for repentance into his own words, and sends it to the Choirmaster, so that, when the people of Israel come to the Temple to worship, they may know that, though their King did a terrible thing, yet, at least, he is sorry for the thing that he has done; and that they might know, too, that “…there is forgiveness with God that he may be feared.”

Psalm 51 is a remarkable document. In it, David affirms four things.

First, David affirms that he knows the God to whom he repents, and that the God to whom he repents is a God of “steadfast love” and “abundant mercy.” A God not only worthy of, but receptive of, our repentance. David wrote:

The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

It was William Jennings Bryan who said that we must be careful to whom we repent:

When we repent toward ourselves, we repent into the mouth of a raging lion. When we repent to others, we repent up a slippery slope. When we repent toward God, we repent to the author of all love and goodness.

Bryan is right. When we repent toward ourselves, we repent into the mouth of a raging lion. A decent man or woman is always harder on him or herself than anyone else. I told you before how I once said to a psychiatrist, “I read that forgiveness is the most therapeutic idea in the world. What do you think?” He responded, “Yes, but just you try and get my patients to forgiven themselves.” I would never ask such a thing. Forgiveness must begin with someone other than ourselves. When we repent toward ourselves, we repent into the mouth of a raging lion.

When we repent toward others, we repent up a slippery slope. This is true. People may forgive us when we wrong them, and mean well enough by it; then the time, tide, and situation changes, and suddenly, they withdraw the forgiveness they have given. This is so because, apart from Christ, human forgiveness lacks the quality of Divine forgiveness. Human beings forgive, but, without God’s help, we rarely forget. God forgets! In Isa 43:25 we read, “I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” When we repent toward others, we repent up a slippery slope; but when we repent toward God,we repent toward the author of all love and goodness.

I heard Bill Clinton’s pastor give an interview on CBS this week. I trust he had the President’s permission to give it. The reporter asked what he told the president about what he had done. He said:

I told him it was reprehensible, and indefensible, but not unforgivable. Make your peace with God and let everything else fall where it will.

That is good advice. The special prosecutor may not forgive him. The congress may not forgive him. The American People may not forgive him. But, if his repentance is genuine, God will!

There is a second thing that David knew. He knew his own sin and failure. 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.5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

Rarely do people have to have their sins pointed out to them in great detail. We know our sins. In his book, What Ever Became of Sin, Carl Menninger tells the story of a deranged man on a street corner. Usually he would just hang his head looking disoriented. As people drew near, he would raise his eyes upon them, lock his gaze upon them, and then point an accusing finger. “The remarkable thing is,” wrote Menninger, “that few people could bear his gaze. Most of those who passed him by dropped their heads in shame.” We know our sins, they are ever before us!

There is a third thing that David knew. He knew what God expects of us. It is interesting that Psalm 51 mentions only one expectation on God’s part. In verse 6 we read that “God requires truth in the inward being.” In other words, God requires that those who follow him, and profess faith in him, must be on the inside what we profess to be on the outside.

It has been rightly said that we do not know a person’s character until “…we know how they act when they think no one is watching.” Man looks on outward appearances, but God looks on the heart. God knows our character.

I love it when I find evidences of God’s wisdom and grace even in non-Christian or pre-Christian sources. The story is told about an architect who came to Plato, the great philosopher, and said, “Sir, for such and such a sum, I will build you a house in which every room will be invisible from the street.” Plato responded, “Sir, I will double the sum, if you will build me a house in which every room is visible from the street.”

I love the motto of the great state of North Carolina. “Esse, Quam Vederi,” “To Be, Rather than to Seem.” God requires “truth in the inward being.”

There is a final thing that David knew. He knew that there was forgiveness with God, and that God could use the forgiven person. That is why he prayed:

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners will return to thee.

I love the line that goes, “uphold me with a willing spirit,” in other words, “give me the will to do your will, O God! Make me truly ‘a man after your own heart!’”

It is hard to avoid not talking about the President. I recently saw him in an interview. The reporter asked, “Mr. President, how will you get through this?”

He responded, “I will get through it, because the God that I believe in is the God of the second chance.”

There are those who doubt the president’s veracity, but in this matter he has told the absolute truth. God is the God of the second chance. Jesus Christ “bore our sins in his body on the (cross).” (1st Peter 2:24) We might still remember our sins, but we remember them like they happened to somebody else. We do have a second chance at living. There are two lives. The one we make our mistakes with, and the life we live in him after we have made those mistakes. “If anyone is in Christ he (or she) is a new creation; the old has passed away, the new has come.” (2nd Cor. 5:17)

If I could say just one thing to the president I would say this:

Mr. President, you will not always be the president, and your departure from office may be sooner than you would like. When you finally leave office, it will be hard on you. It is much easier to be a never was than it is to be a has been. You are also concerned how people will judge your time in office. History may not judge your presidency with kindness, but you may be sure that God does not judge presidents, but people. Use well the second-chance that you believe that God gives!

Speaking of people, we would do well to note that David did not take all the blame for himself. Elsewhere he wrote:

The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any that act wisely, that seek after God. They have all gone astray, they are all alike corrupt; there is none that does good, no, not one. (Psalm 14:2,3)

That is why I have called this prayer not “A Sinner’s Prayer,” but “The Sinner’s Prayer.” We may not be guilty of David’s sin; we may thank God that we are not, but still, we are all guilty of failing our God and our Christ. That is why we all must pray:

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.Then I will teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners will return to thee.

Finis