I did some searching on the internet, and it appears that nobody wants to feel guilty. Not so much evidence of people not wanting to do bad things, but nobody wants to feel guilty. The term “guilt-free” is now a major marketing tool: I came across all sorts of “guilt-free” opportunities: guilt-free mothering, guilt-free home schooling, guilt-free touring, guilt-free iPad apps for children, guilt-free clothes, guilt-free engagement rings (that one’s a head scratcher!), and of course guilt-free chocolate and muffins and baking and restaurants and even guilt-free quinoa cookies.
The very prevalence of “guilt-free” marketing is a clue to guilt being a universal feeling. And maybe it isn’t even limited to people: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ISzf2pryI
Guilt is a very real feeling for everyone except for psychopaths. And though most of what I read on the internet was about how terrible guilt is and how we shouldn’t feel it, I – and the Word of God – would disagree (assuming we are talking about healthy guilt over things we have done which are wrong and not false guilt or manipulative guilt or the various other perversions of this emotion). We are in the middle of the season of Lent, which is our season of preparation for remembering the cross and celebrating the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and a significant part of getting ready for Easter is examining ourselves so that we can deal with anything in our lives that causes guilt.
Ps 51
We have been using Psalm 51 as a guide for our Lenten preparation, let’s read it together.
Psalm 51
For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.
1 Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.
3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
and justified when you judge.
5 Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
6 Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb;
you taught me wisdom in that secret place.
7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins
and blot out all my iniquity.
10 Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
so that sinners will turn back to you.
14 Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,
you who are God my Savior,
and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.
15 Open my lips, Lord,
and my mouth will declare your praise.
16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
17 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart
you, God, will not despise.
18 May it please you to prosper Zion,
to build up the walls of Jerusalem.
19 Then you will delight in the sacrifices of the righteous,
in burnt offerings offered whole;
then bulls will be offered on your altar.
Vs 3-6 (or should it be 5?):
Last week we studied the first part, the space between the story of David’s sin and the beginning of this Psalm where David experiences conviction of sin, and vs. 1-2, and I encouraged you to take some time this past week to really reflect and ask the Holy Spirit to bring conviction of any sin that is in your life. Today let’s continue with the next section:
3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
and justified when you judge.
5 Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
6 Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb;
you taught me wisdom in that secret place.
This is the NIV translation, and I actually want to start with the last verse there and deal with that before jumping in to the rest, because I’ve been reading this and memorizing it and vs 6 makes no sense to me. How can an unborn baby be faithful, and learn wisdom? I mean, I can appreciate poetry and I can tell from vs 5 that David is talking about sin being part of life from the very beginning of our lives (we are born with a sinful nature), but vs 6 makes no sense.
Now anytime this happens to you, the first thing I recommend we all do is check a few other translations and see how they translate the verses that aren’t making sense. Remember we are reading ancient words, and we are incredibly fortunate to have lots of brilliant people who have spent their lives studying those ancient languages and our culture and ways to translate it so we can understand, and we should make use of that and compare. And when we do that with vs. 6, we find some rather interesting differences. Let’s compare 3 side by side:
NIV NRSV NASB
5 Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
6 Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb;
you taught me wisdom in that secret place. 5 Indeed, I was born guilty,
a sinner when my mother conceived me.
6 You desire truth in the inward being;[a]
therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. 5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
And in sin my mother conceived me.
6 Behold, You desire truth in the [e]innermost being,
And in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom.
See the difference? The NIV writes “womb” and make the verse to mean that God wanted us to be faithful and taught us wisdom even in our mother’s womb, while NRSV and NASB take that same original word and translate “inner being” and make the verse to mean that God wants us to know truth/faithfulness/wisdom in the depths of ourselves.
I figured out what is going on by reading the footnote from the NRSV: “Psalm 51:6 Meaning of Heb uncertain”. So when that happens, translators are in a tough spot and have to make some hard decisions, and here the NIV translators base their decision on the context of vs. 5 which talks about conception and birth, while the other translators make a break from that idea and believe the verse is talking about the deep places of each of us, our “innermost” and “hidden” parts. And to me, that makes a lot more sense.
Ok, for those of you that sort of tuned me out in that little technical diversion, come back! If you get nothing else out of that, at least get this: think about what you are reading! And if it doesn’t make sense, dig in and figure out why.
Vs. 3-4
So let’s come back to the heart in the passage. Remember how we began with the emotion of guilt, and remember that David wrote this Psalm out of his own deep feelings of guilt after his sin. Here’s what he writes:
3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
and justified when you judge.
I know…
The first verse is a familiar sentiment for those of us who are emotionally attentive and are sensitive to God’s Spirit: “I know… my sin is always before me”. It is one of those things that is simply true: we all know, deep down, the places we have sinned. Sometimes we bury them deep – we have secrets that are there, sometimes that nobody knows – but we know them. They are never far from our minds. Many people try to bury those things deep down, lock them away in some deep inner place and pretend they don’t exist, but that never works. Buried sin will always leech out, and the guilt and shame you feel while it is buried will destroy you more than your worst fear of what might happen if you bring it into the light and deal with it. I really believe that. Let me just say really clearly: if there is some deep rooted guilt/shame in your life today, some secret you’ve tried to bury, it is much much healthier for you to deal with it. I’m not talking about sharing it in corporate prayer or posting it on facebook or putting an ad on a billboard, but bring it into the light with God and maybe one or two other people you can trust who love you unconditionally – and here I offer myself or Pastor Sue or Pastor Garret and promise we will not judge or reject – so that you can be free.
Because David’s words are true for all of us: we know our sin, we know our transgressions; so let’s deal with them and move on.
Against you, you alone…
Verse 4 is one of the most profound insights into sin that I have ever read. And here I believe is one of the reasons why even though David committed such horrible sins, God still called him “a man after my own heart”. “4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight”
David goes far beyond excuses. Far beyond rationalizations. Far beyond deflection. Far beyond minimizations. And that is what I most often do when confronted with sin – make excuses, rationalize, deflect, and minimize. Especially some of the “interior” sins, like greed or lust or envy – those sins that we think are just in our heads and hearts, that we think aren’t a big deal because “nobody else gets hurt or even knows”.
What David states bores down to the heart of the matter. Sin is against God. Now David isn’t trying to say he did nothing to Bathsheba or her husband Uriah, he knows he did and he acted to make restitution, he is just taking us to a deeper place. Sin is, at its core, a rebellion, a rejection, of God and all His goodness. Sin is taking the incredible, precious gifts of God that He has given for us to enjoy and hating them and destroying them and despising them. We like to color it other ways, to make it more palatable and try to lessen our feelings of guilt, but sin is rebellion and rejection of God and all His goodness to us.
It is like taking a beautiful crystal bowl worth thousands of dollars, made to hold the most beautiful flowers and brighten the room and the spirits of all who pass, and given to you by someone who loves you very much at great sacrifice to them, and using it for a toilet. It is like taking a brand new vehicle, again given to you at great cost by someone who loves you very much, and pushing it off a cliff and then thumbing your nose at the giver as you walk past them. It is like having someone look you straight in the eyes, share their deepest secrets and let you past the walls and into the depths of their soul, and saying “I love you”, and spitting in their face and telling them they disgust you. Sin is even worse that those.
David recognizes that all sin, really, is a rejection of God, and provides these potent words: “4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight”. And I love how David just calls it out and out evil. Because that is what sin is – no matter how it is packaged, no matter how it presents itself as appealing or tempting or as “no big deal” – sin is evil.
Acceptance:
The last verse for today reveals a willingness to accept punishment. David writes, “so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge.” The courtroom imagery is obvious – God the judge, forced to pass sentence. But this is a judge who loves us dearly, who weeps more at our “guilty” verdict that we do, who in fact went so far as to figure out a plan so that the just sentence – the verdict of “guilty” – and the punishment that must accompany it – could be placed on the shoulders of someone else. More on that in a moment around the communion table.
But just before that, do you hear David’s heart in his words? And do you share it? It is a heart of acceptance. It is a heart that says, “yes, God, You are right… You are justified”. It’s like David knows there is only one possible verdict (and as a King he would have been very familiar with this), and so rather than fight, or get angry at God, or resent God, or turn away, David just says, “God, you are right. I have done evil, and I deserve the verdict.”
Into Communion:
3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
and justified when you judge.
5 Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
We have all sinned. We all “fall short of the glory of God”. And we all deserve to be convicted and hear the verdict, “guilty”.
But we don’t.
It is only once we realize the magnitude of our sin that we begin to understand the magnitude of what Jesus has done for us. Jesus took upon Himself our sin – the burden of it, and the punishment for it – and that “atonement” required Jesus’ very life, which ended in one of the most horrific deaths imaginable. And it was all so that you and I would not have to experience that “guilty” verdict and the punishment that sin requires, which is separation from God. Now, because of Jesus, there is no condemnation, for we have been set free from the law of sin and death. Jesus paid our penalty, He paid it all. Can you let that sink in for a moment? We’ve been thinking about our sin, feeling its weight, calling it “evil”, and realizing that God is “right in his verdict and justified when he judges”. And then Jesus steps in. In between us and sin, and Jesus deals with it. Jesus defeats it. Jesus frees us from it.
Here this clearly: your sin has been dealt with. Forgiveness is offered, freedom is available and it is here right now, this moment. And that freedom is both from the price of our past sin, and also from sin’s control over our lives, so that we need not live in it any longer. That power is here, now, today. I invite you into it as we continue around the Lord’s table. Confess your sin, let go of it because it has already been dealt with, and step into a new way of living, a way of living built on the solid rock of our love for our Lord in response to what He has done, and on His steadfast love for us. Let’s then live out of that love, and in joy and power, as forgiven, cleansed, purified, sanctified, and adopted Children of God. “Were the whole realm of nature mine, that would be an offering far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”
