Psalm 51:5 2/28/18 (Create in Me a Clean Heart #5) SINFUL AT BIRTH
A scorpion asked a beaver to take him across the river on his back. “Are you insane?” asked the beaver. “While I'm swimming you'll sting me and then I'll drown.”
“Oh, come now,” laughed the scorpion, “why would I sting you? Then I'd drown too. Come on, be logical.”
“That makes sense,” said the beaver. “Hop on and off we go.” The scorpion climbed on the beaver's back but halfway across the river he gave the poor trusting beaver a mighty sting. “Why did you do such a evil thing? You said yourself there would be no logic in your stinging me. Why did you do it?”
“Logic has nothing to do with it,” sighed the scorpion. “It's just my nature.”
Have you ever wondered why it’s so hard to stay on the straight and narrow? To do good instead of evil? And on the other side, why there is such a constant pull to think or say or do something that you know you shouldn’t do? Well, if so, you’re not alone. Probably the greatest evangelist the world has ever known had the same problem. I’m not talking about Billy Graham, but the Apostle Paul. Listen again to what he said in Romans 7. We’ve looked at this many times, but look at it again with the connection to Psalm 51.
Slide: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do… I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” (Romans 7:15–19 NIV)
Folks, those are words from somebody who had given serious thought to life and truth and the human condition, and reached the same conclusion reached by David in Psalm 51. We have a sinful nature.
Slide: Circle “Sinful Nature”
Logic has nothing to do with it. It’s not just our behavior that is sinful, it’s our nature – our sad inheritance from the rebellion of Adam and Eve. Again, as David goes deeper into his prayer of repentance, he put it this way:
Slide: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” (Psalms 51:5 NIV)
He wasn’t slandering his mother when he talked about being conceived in sin, but he is saying what the rest of Scripture also says: that he was a human being right from the moment of conception. And right from that moment he also inherited the sinful nature of our first parents. This is called “original sin”, that we inherit the sinful nature of our parents. It’s just like a genetic defect. They’ll never isolate it in the lab, but it’s there nonetheless. David is just being brutally honest about the human condition and the fact that he and we don’t just have a doing problem, we have a being problem. He’s saying, “God, forgive me, not only for my sins, but forgive me for being a sinner, for being born with a bent to sin.”
And folks, you need to understand how radical this teaching is and how important it is for how you decide to see the world. This is a huge world-view issue. For instance, this truth is denied by the very nature of evolutionary theory that teaches that human beings are just evolved animals. And every now and then, they’re honest enough to tell us about it. A number of years ago, Benn Stein in the movie “Expelled” did us all a favor by putting the evolutionist William Provine, on record for the logical conclusions of evolution. I’ve shown it before, but it bears repeating:
Slide: Will Provine clip from Expelled
It still sounds shocking today, doesn’t it? But as I said, at least he’s honest about what an evolutionary worldview means. If humans are just products of evolution, then we certainly are not sinful. In fact, nothing is sinful. Nothing is wrong – or right – “no ultimate foundation for ethics, no meaning to life and no freewill.” According to evolutionists, we don’t even really make choices. We’re just “dancing to our DNA” as Richard Dawkins likes to put it. And if we are nothing more than highly evolved animals, then what happens in our brains is nothing more than chemical reactions. You can’t hold somebody accountable for chemical reactions in their brains – after all, you don’t blame a lion for attacking and killing a zebra or an eagle for snatching up a trout. Why blame humans when they do something similar? And yet we do, don’t we, and we know instinctively that we should. We know that you can’t run a society without having a foundation for ethics. We know for instance, that you can’t let a Dr. Larry Nassar roam free to abuse our little girls, right? (more on that in Sunday’s message). But I hope that you can see how important it is that we duke it out with this worldview, and that we teach our children to do so. Because that’s the worldview that was adopted by Hitler, by Stalin, by Mao and many other dictators whose policies simply reflected their beliefs. That’s one of the reasons that we’re going to start the Answers Bible Curriculum for all grades and for the Adults starting this Sunday. We are determined to lay down a solid foundation for the next generation to stand strong on the word of God, our number one core value here at Grace.
Coming right back to the Psalm, David had a very different worldview, a Biblical worldview that didn’t have time for excuses for his behavior. He recognized that he needed to come clean with God. This prayer is not: “Oops, I made a mistake, sorry God, but I’m still basically a good person.” What a crock! That’s not the honesty you need before God. You can’t come to God and pretend. What good is that? He already knows everything about you, everything you’ve ever done, said or thought, so you might as well admit it.
Slide: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” (Psalms 51:5 NIV)
That’s what honesty looks like. And if you don’t recognize this, you run the risk of putting yourself into dangerous situations. You start thinking you can handle temptation on your own steam. Remember this proverb?
Slide: “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18 NIV)
Who wrote it? // Not David, but Solomon, David’s son. Where do you think he learned it? Certainly from God, but also from David – and his mother Bathsheba. Right? And folks, learn something from that. The lessons you learn from your brokenness, should not just be kept to yourself. Look for opportunities to let others learn from your mistakes, so they don’t have to make them all themselves.
It’s possible Judas thought he could be the treasurer for the disciples and hold the money bag and he didn’t have to worry about little things like accountability or greed. He was wrong. Peter thought he could handle temptation and testing and said to Jesus:
Slide: “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you.” And all the other disciples said the same.” (Matthew 26:35 NIV)
They were wrong. And so are you if you think you are immune to temptation and can handle it without the Holy Spirit.
You need to understand this is a spiritual battle, and what we are doing here is not an academic exercise where we just learn stuff. We’re not just considering objectively whether or not the Christian philosophy might be a better way to live, whether or not it might be nice to belong to a church family and have brats and sloppy Joe together. We are here because we absolutely NEED a Savior. We need Jesus. We need Him because we commit sins and because we are sinful, and there is nothing in ourselves that is able to win our way back to God. We’re just like the guy who’s fallen and can’t get up.
Slide: sin open year round pic
Only God can lift us up from the mire of sin. And the good news is, He does just that. The Bible says:
Slide: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8 NIV)
And so we come in the Lenten season right back to the cross, where we see the very beating heart of God, and His love for you. Folks, Jesus didn’t die for good people. He died for you. If you could have been good on your own, Jesus never would have had to go to the cross. But you can’t, so He did. And there He bore all our sins, all our shame, all our guilt, and let it all be punished in Him so that you could be forgiven and free from it. That’s why you’re here. That’s why you’re willing to spend 40 days and 14 sermons looking at a Psalm of repentance, one verse at a time, as we go deeper and deeper into an honest confession of our sins and a passionate embrace of the forgiveness of those sins won by our Lord Jesus Christ. Let’s pray:
Lord Jesus, while we were still sinners, You died for us. You won for us our greatest need, forgiveness of the sins that haunt us and keep us from the abundant life You want us to lead. Thank You for Your amazing grace. Help us to receive it with great joy and look for opportunities to share it with those around us. Amen.
