Have Mercy

2 Samuel 11:1-16, 26; 12:1-13; Psalm 51:1 (Create in Me a Clean Heart #1) Have Mercy

Just so that I don’t have to ignore the elephant in the room… Today we have an odd combination to put before you: Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day. A day full of bitterness and ashes meets a day full of hearts and roses. It just seems strange… until you look deeper.

If Valentine’s Day is really about love, then nothing could be more appropriate. Jesus said:

Slide: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13 NIV)

Many lovers over the years have made great claims to their beloveds and even declared: “I would die for you!” Jesus actually did it. In response, the Church has for over a thousand years observed a 40 day season of repentance called “Lent”, leading up to the remembrance of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross on Good Friday and the mighty victory of His resurrection. So if you can believe it, I actually found a cartoon to combine Valentine’s day and Lent

Slide: ‘toon “Valentines are red, Wednesdays ashes are gray, you can’t spell “Valentine” without “Lent” on this day.

Did you know that? That you can’t spell “valentine” without “Lent”.

Slide: circle “Lent” in “valentine”

Just an interesting side-note. Along with the fact that “God IS Love” and if you want to learn how to love another human being perfectly, you must tap into the love of God. Folks, our loving God didn’t send us a card and a box of chocolates, “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”

I can think of no better response to the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus than for us to come before Him in true repentance and pray: “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” (Ps. 51:10) So this year we’re going to be working through the Lenten season using David’s great Psalm of repentance, Psalm 51. Almost every year on Ash Wednesday, we have recited Psalm 51 as a desperate cry for mercy for those who desperately need God’s mercy and grace. But I was quite surprised to realize that I had never thought to use this incredible Psalm for a Lenten series. Well, we’re going to fix that this year. But before we get into the verses themselves, we have to tackle the introduction to this Psalm. It goes like this:

Slide: “For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.” (Psalms 51:0 NIV)

“For the Director of music” simply shows that many of these Psalms were meant to be used in worship, just as we still use them today. There is a meter that you can hear in the Hebrew but that doesn’t translate for us. It would be like our rhyming hymns. There are 55 Psalms with these kinds of instructions. Historian Philip Schaff says, “The Psalter is the first hymn-book of the church, and will outlive all other hymn-books. Its treasury of pious experience will never will be exhausted.” Of course the experience listed here is far from “pious”. It is in fact the exact opposite – which is one of the reasons it is so incredibly helpful for God’s people. The words of Psalm 51 are not some poetic, idealistic, antiseptic, theoretic advice from somebody who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. They were words ripped from the heart of somebody who had absolutely no other choice then to throw himself on the mercy of Almighty God.

We don’t know a lot about the other Psalm writers, but we certainly do about this one right? What do we know about King David? Let’s take the good stuff first.

Slide: Good side first

Shepherd

Youngest of the eight sons of Jesse

Goliath killer

Lion and Bear killer

Warrior King

Natural leader

Poet

Musician Hot tempered

Polygamist

Lustful

Adulterer / Rapist?

Liar / Manipulator

Murderer

Bad father

King David was certainly considered to be the greatest king of Israel. He extended their borders and ushered in the golden age of Israel, the golden standard that they would be trying to get back to for a thousand years. He was, on top of that, one of the bravest and best warriors who ever lived. We know what he did to Goliath. Before that he laid out a lion and a bear with a club when he was just a boy. He was a poet, a statesmen a musician, a natural born leader…

But David also had a dark side, didn’t he?

Slide: Dark side

For instance at times he was hot-tempered. If you were listening, you might have caught that in David’s response to the prophet Nathan’s story with the little lamb. I’m not gonna walk through that because Nathan did a better job then I ever could and he certainly got a response from David: