PSALM 51:1-19 (NASB)
1 Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness;
According to the greatness of Your compassion 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 only, I have sinned And done what is evil in Your sight, So that You are justified when You speak
And blameless when You judge.
5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
And in sin my mother conceived me.
6 Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being,
And in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom.
7 Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Make me to hear joy and gladness,
Let the bones which You have broken rejoice.
9 Hide Your face from my sins And blot out all my iniquities.
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,
And renew a steadfast 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 me with a willing spirit.
13 Then I will teach transgressors Your ways,
And sinners will be converted to You.
14 Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation; Then my tongue will joyfully sing of Your righteousness.
15 O Lord, open my lips, That my mouth may declare Your praise.
16 For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it;
You are not pleased with burnt offering.
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.
18 By Your favor do good to Zion; Build the walls of Jerusalem.
19 Then You will delight in righteous sacrifices, In burnt offering and whole burnt offering; Then young bulls will be offered on Your altar.
MURDER THEY WROTE
Of Crime And Punishment: David and Uriah
David was a murderer polygamist, adulterer, liar and poor father. His family life was a catastrophe matched only by the murder of his faithful soldier Uriah. Yet God did not remove him from the throne, and allowed him to reign for 40 years.
What are the lessons to be learned from his life?
THE WRONG LESSON IS THIS:
God does not take sin ________________________.
1. God uses ________________________.
There are some sins that disqualify you from a position of ______________, ______________, or require ______________.
2. God can ________________________. people who have committed disqualifying sin.
DAVID'S REIGN OF PAIN:
1. 4 of his sons dies as a result of his sin
2. David lost control of his army and kingdom
3. One of his sons publically violated his wives
4. Absalom lead a coup against him
5. Pelted with manure as he abandoned Jerusalem
David is the wrong person to look at for comfort. Nevertheless, David was a man after God’s own heart. That says something about how God deals with sin?
HOW DOES GOD DEAL WITH SIN?
1. God __________ __________ that endures forever
2. God __________ __________ that brings change
David’s life shows the consequences of sin. God's hatred for sin and forgiveness through repentance.
PSALM 51:1-19 (NASB)
1 Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness;
According to the greatness of Your compassion 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 only, I have sinned And done what is evil in Your sight, So that You are justified when You speak
And blameless when You judge.
5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
And in sin my mother conceived me.
6 Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being,
And in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom.
7 Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Make me to hear joy and gladness,
Let the bones which You have broken rejoice.
9 Hide Your face from my sins And blot out all my iniquities.
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,
And renew a steadfast 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 me with a willing spirit.
13 Then I will teach transgressors Your ways,
And sinners will be converted to You.
14 Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation; Then my tongue will joyfully sing of Your righteousness.
15 O Lord, open my lips, That my mouth may declare Your praise.
16 For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it;
You are not pleased with burnt offering.
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.
18 By Your favor do good to Zion; Build the walls of Jerusalem.
19 Then You will delight in righteous sacrifices, In burnt offering and whole burnt offering; Then young bulls will be offered on Your altar.
MURDER THEY WROTE
Of Crime And Punishment: David and Uriah
David was a murderer polygamist, adulterer, liar and poor father. His family life was a catastrophe matched only by the murder of his faithful soldier Uriah. Yet God did not remove him from the throne, and allowed him to reign for 40 years.
What are the lessons to be learned from his life?
THE WRONG LESSON IS THIS:
God does not take sin SERIOUSLY.
1. God uses SINNERS.
There are some sins that disqualify you from a position of LEADERSHIP, TRUST, or require ACCOUNTABILITY.
2. God can RESTORE people who have committed disqualifying sin.
DAVID'S REIGN OF PAIN:
1. 4 of his sons dies as a result of his sin
2. David lost control of his army and kingdom
3. One of his sons publically violated his wives
4. Absalom lead a coup against him
5. Pelted with manure as he abandoned Jerusalem
David is the wrong person to look at for comfort. Nevertheless, David was a man after God’s own heart. That says something about how God deals with sin?
HOW DOES GOD DEAL WITH SIN?
1. God PROMISES GRACE that endures forever
2. God PRIZES REPENTANCE that brings change
David’s life shows the consequences of sin. God's hatred for sin and forgiveness through repentance.
Pierre François Lacenaire (20 December 1803 – 9 January 1836) was a French murderer and would-be poet.
Lacenaire was born in Francheville, Rhône, near the city of Lyon in eastern France. His parents were Jean-Baptiste Lacenaire, a bourgeois merchant, and Marguerite Gaillard.
Upon finishing his education with excellent results, he joined the French army, eventually deserting in 1829 at the time of the expedition to Morea. He then became a criminal and was in and out of prison, which was, as he called it, his "criminal university."
While in prison, Lacenaire wrote a satirical poem, "Petition of a Thief to a King, his Neighbor." He also wrote an article titled "The Prisons and the Penal Regime" for a magazine.
To aid him in committing his crimes, Lacenaire recruited two henchmen, Pierre Victor Avril (whom he had met while in prison) and Hippolyte François.
In the months between the beginning of his trial for a double murder and his execution, he wrote Memoirs, Revelations and Poems.[1] During his trial, he fiercely defended his crimes as a valid protest against social injustice. He turned the judicial proceedings into a theatrical event and his prison cell into a salon. He made a lasting impression upon French society and upon several writers, such as Balzac and Dostoevsky.
He was executed on the guillotine at the age of 32.
Crime and Punishment (Pre-reform Russian: ???????????? ? ?????????; post-reform Russian: ???????????? ? ?????????, tr. Prestupléniye i nakazániye, IPA: [pr??st?'pl?en??je ? n?k?'zan??je]) is a novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments during 1866.[1] Later, it was published in a single volume. It is the second of Dostoevsky's full-length novels following his return from 5 years of exile in Siberia. Crime and Punishment is considered the first great novel of his "mature" period of writing.[2]
Crime and Punishment focuses on the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student in Saint Petersburg who formulates a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her money. Before the killing, Raskolnikov believes that with the money he could liberate himself from poverty and go on to perform great deeds; but confusion, hesitation, and chance muddy his plan for a morally justifiable killing.
Dostoevsky conceived the idea of Crime and Punishment in the summer of 1865. At the time the author owed large sums of money to creditors, and was trying to help the family of his brother Mikhail, who had died in early 1864. Projected under the title The Drunkards, it was to deal "with the present question of drunkenness ... [in] all its ramifications, especially the picture of a family and the bringing up of children in these circumstances, etc., etc." Once Dostoevsky conceived Raskolnikov and his crime, inspired by the case of Pierre François Lacenaire, this theme became ancillary, centering on the story of the Marmeladov family.[3]
Dostoevsky offered his story or novella (at the time Dostoevsky was not thinking of a novel[4]) to the publisher Mikhail Katkov, whose monthly journal, The Russian Messenger, was a prestigious publication of its kind, and the outlet for both Ivan Turgenev and Leo Tolstoy. However, Dostoevsky, having carried on quite bruising polemics with Katkov in the early 1860s, had never published anything in its pages. Nonetheless, forced by his situation, after appeals elsewhere failed, Dostoevsky turned as a last resort to Katkov, urging for an advance on a proposed contribution.[5] In a letter to Katkov written in September 1865, Dostoevsky explained to him that the work was to be about a young man who yields to "certain strange, 'unfinished' ideas, yet floating in the air";[6] he had thus embarked on his plan to explore the moral and psychological dangers of the ideology of "radicalism".[7] In letters written in November 1865 an important conceptual change occurred: the "story" has become a "novel", and from here on all references to Crime and Punishment are to a novel.[8]
Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, a former student, lives in a tiny garret on the top floor of a run-down apartment building in St. Petersburg. He is sickly, dressed in rags, short on money, and talks to himself, but he is also handsome, proud, and intelligent. He is contemplating committing an awful crime, but the nature of the crime is not yet clear. He goes to the apartment of an old pawnbroker, Alyona Ivanovna, to get money for a watch and to plan the crime. Afterward, he stops for a drink at a tavern, where he meets a man named Marmeladov, who, in a fit of drunkenness, has abandoned his job and proceeded on a five-day drinking binge, afraid to return home to his family. Marmeladov tells Raskolnikov about his sickly wife, Katerina Ivanovna, and his daughter, Sonya, who has been forced into prostitution to support the family. Raskolnikov walks with Marmeladov to Marmeladov’s apartment, where he meets Katerina and sees firsthand the squalid conditions in which they live.
The next day, Raskolnikov receives a letter from his mother, Pulcheria Alexandrovna, informing him that his sister, Dunya, is engaged to be married to a government official named Luzhin and that they are all moving to St. Petersburg. He goes to another tavern, where he overhears a student talking about how society would be better off if the old pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna were dead. Later, in the streets, Raskolnikov hears that the pawnbroker will be alone in her apartment the next evening. He sleeps fitfully and wakes up the next day, finds an ax, and fashions a fake item to pawn to distract the pawnbroker. That night, he goes to her apartment and kills her. While he is rummaging through her bedroom, looking for money, her sister, Lizaveta, walks in, and Raskolnikov kills her as well. He barely escapes from the apartment without being seen, then returns to his apartment and collapses on the sofa.
A year and a half later, Raskolnikov is in prison in Siberia, where he has been for nine months. Sonya has moved to the town outside the prison, and she visits Raskolnikov regularly and tries to ease his burden. Because of his confession, his mental confusion surrounding the murders, and testimony about his past good deeds, he has received, instead of a death sentence, a reduced sentence of eight years of hard labor in Siberia. After Raskolnikov’s arrest, his mother became delirious and died. Razumikhin and Dunya were married. For a short while, Raskolnikov remains as proud and alienated from humanity as he was before his confession, but he eventually realizes that he truly loves Sonya and expresses remorse for his crime.
