Psalm 51:8 3/11/18 (Create in Me a Clean Heart #8) LET ME HEAR JOY
As we get started, I want to share with you a story by Phillip Yancy that I think does a great job of illustrating this text and this chapter, Luke 15, the Lost and Found Chapter of the Bible:
A young girl grows up on a cherry orchard just above Traverse City, Michigan. Her parents, a bit old-fashioned, tend to overreact to her nose ring, the music she listens to, and the length of her skirts.
They ground her a few times, and she seethes inside. “I hate you!” she screams at her father when he knocks on the door of her room after an argument, and that night she acts on a plan she has mentally rehearsed scores of times. She runs away.
She has visited Detroit only once before, on a bus trip with her church youth group to watch the Tigers play. Because newspapers in Traverse City report in lurid detail the gangs, drugs, and violence in downtown Detroit, she concludes that is probably the last place her parents will look for her.
California, maybe, or Florida, but not Detroit.
Her second day there she meets a man who drives the biggest car she’s ever seen. He offers her a ride, buys her lunch, and arranges a place for her to stay. He gives her some pills that make her feel better than she’s ever felt before.
She was right all along, she decides: her parents were keeping her from all the fun. The good life continues for a month, two months, a year.
The man with the big car—she calls him “Boss” —teaches her a few things that men like. Since she’s underage, men pay a premium for her. She lives in a penthouse and orders room service whenever she wants.
Occasionally she thinks about the folks back home, but their lives now seem so boring and provincial that she can hardly believe she grew up there.
She has a brief scare when she sees her picture printed on the back of a milk carton with the headline, “Have you seen this child?” But by now she has blond hair, and with all the makeup and body-piercing jewelry she wears, nobody would mistake her for a child.
Besides, most of her friends are runaways, and nobody squeals in Detroit. After a year, the first sallow signs of illness appear, and it amazes her how fast the boss turns mean. “These days, we can’t mess around,” he growls, and before she knows it she’s out on the street without a penny to her name.
She still turns a couple of tricks a night, but they don’t pay much, and all the money goes to support her habit. When winter blows in she finds herself sleeping on metal grates outside the big department stores.
“Sleeping” is the wrong word--a teenage girl at night in downtown Detroit can never relax her guard. Dark bands circle her eyes. Her cough worsens.
One night, as she lies awake listening for footsteps, all of a sudden everything about her life looks different. She no longer feels like a woman of the world. She feels like what she is: a little girl, lost in a cold and frightening city. She begins to whimper. Her pockets are empty and she’s hungry. She needs a fix.
She pulls her legs tight underneath her and shivers under the newspapers she’s piled atop her coat.
Something jolts a synapse of memory and a single image fills her mind: of May in Traverse City, when a million cherry trees bloom at once, with her golden retriever dashing through the rows and rows of blossomy trees in chase of a tennis ball.
God, why did I leave, she says to herself, and pain stabs at her heart. My dog back home eats better than I do now. She’s sobbing, and she knows in a flash that more than anything else in the world she wants to go home.
Three straight phone calls, three straight connections with the answering machine. She hangs up without leaving a message the first two times, but the third time she says:
“Dad, Mom, it’s me. I was wondering about maybe coming home. I’m catching a bus up your way, and it’ll get there about midnight tomorrow. If you’re not there, well, I guess I’ll just stay on the bus until it hits Canada.”
It takes about seven hours for a bus to make all the stops between Detroit and Traverse City, and during that time she realizes the flaws in her plan. What if her parents are out of town and miss the message? Shouldn’t she have waited another day or so until she could talk to them?
Even if they are home, they probably wrote her off as dead long ago. She should have given them some time to overcome the shock.
Her thoughts bounce back and forth between those worries and the speech she is preparing for her father. “Dad, I’m sorry. I know I was wrong. It’s not your fault, it’s all mine. Dad, can you forgive me?”
She says the words over and over, her throat tightening even as she rehearses them. She hasn’t apologized to anyone in years.
The bus has been driving with lights on since Bay City. Tiny snowflakes hit the road, and the asphalt steams. She’s forgotten how dark it gets at night out here. A deer darts across the road and the bus swerves. Every so often, a billboard, a sign posting the mileage to Traverse City. Oh, God.
When the bus finally rolls into the station, its air brakes hissing in protest, the driver announces in a crackly voice over the microphone, “Fifteen minutes, folks. That’s all we have here.” Fifteen minutes to decide her life.
She checks herself in a compact mirror, smoothes her hair, and licks the lipstick off her teeth. She looks at the tobacco stains on her fingertips, and wonders if her parents will notice—if they’re there.
She walks into the terminal not knowing what to expect, and not one of the thousand scenes that have played out in her mind prepare her for what she sees.
There, in the concrete-walls-and-plastic-chairs bus terminal in Traverse City, Michigan, stands a group of 40 brothers and sisters and great-aunts and uncles and cousins and a grandmother and great-grandmother to boot.
They are all wearing ridiculous-looking party hats and blowing noisemakers, and taped across the entire wall of the terminal is a computer-generated banner that reads “Welcome home!”
Out of the crowd of well-wishers breaks her dad.
She looks through tears and begins the memorized speech, “Dad, I’m sorry. I know . . . “ He interrupts her. “Hush, child. We’ve got no time for that. No time for apologies. You’ll be late for the party. A banquet’s waiting for you at home.” A story by Phillip Yancy found in Christianity Today 10/6/97
Folks, why is that such a powerful story? And why do we almost instinctively respond to it? It’s a story about Grace, isn’t it? A story about love and forgiveness and second chances. It’s a story this world needs to hear. And it’s the story of your God and you. It was of course, a story that Jesus told in Luke 15, and a story King David looked forward to in faith and hoped for with all his heart when he prayed:
Slide: “Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.” (Psalms 51:8 NIV)
The parable we’re referencing is called the Prodigal Son, but it could just as easily be called the Prodigal Father, or really, the Prodigal God. Prodigal means giving something or spending something on a lavish scale. And the point Jesus was making loud and clear in that parable is that’s the kind of God you have. He would say later on in Luke: “The Son of man came to seek and to save the lost.” And He is waiting and hoping to have the chance to throw open his arms to a wayward son or daughter who is ready to return to Him and lavishly forgive and love her or him all over again.
And can you imagine how a lost son or daughter would feel to be received by a prodigal Father, lavishly loved and completely forgiven with no conditions, no clauses, just amazing grace? Can you imagine how the woman caught in the act of adultery felt when Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you, now go and leave your life of sin.” Can you imagine how Peter felt when Jesus completely restored him and gave him the commission: “Feed my sheep.”?
We don’t have to imagine how King David felt when he got off his knees and he realized that God had indeed forgiven him. He wrote about it again and again. Here’s one example:
Slide: “You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing to you and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give you thanks forever.” (Psalms 30:11–12 NIV)
His prayer was answered, wasn’t it?
Slide: “Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.” (Psalms 51:8 NIV)
That’s absolutely awesome stuff. It’s what can be yours when you truly repent and resolve not just to regret your sins, but to walk away from them, to leave them on the cross and walk into the new life God wants for you and has made possible for you by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. And by the way, when that happens, heaven rejoices with you. Jesus said:
Slide: “I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” (Luke 15:10 NIV)
They party in heaven when the lost are found. And why not? There’s nothing cooler in heaven or on earth than to see somebody taken off the road to hell and put on the road to heaven. Because I have to remind you – there is another road, isn’t there? Can you imagine for instance, how Judas felt when he was led by Satan to betray Jesus, and then found himself trapped in regret, with no way out – he thought - but to hang himself? What horrific thoughts were going on in his head?
How about the Sanhedrin, after they had orchestrated the murder of Jesus, and then seen him risen from the dead? And yet their hearts were so hard at that point that they still refused to repent and receive the Messiah, the Son of God. Instead, they paid the soldiers to lie about it so that they could cling to their puny, earthly power. Can you imagine the eternal regret they are experiencing right now because they did not want Jesus and Jesus finally let them have that – an eternity without Him.
How about Pilate? His wife had told him – while he was on the judges seat: “Don’t have anything to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him.” (Matthew 27:19 NIV) Do you think he ever managed to clean his hands and wash away the stain of having condemned that innocent man to be crucified?
David elsewhere tells us what happens when you try to stuff your sin and pretend it never happened:
Slide: “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. ” (Psalms 32:2–4 NIV)
Folks, we were made by God with a heart that is meant to be tuned to Him – to live right and do right. When we don’t, there’s a sorrow about that. Certainly, there’s a sorrow in God’s spirit, but also in ours that you can feel down to your very bones, with your strength and spirit drained. David is praying for and teaching us to reach for something totally different: joy and gladness.
You know, it’s hard to look at the truth about yourself, but ignoring the truth is harder…
Another word for that is “repent.” Folks, let me ask you a question: when you get a sliver in your finger, what do you do?
Slide: Sliver pic
Do you sit and admire it? Do you pretend it doesn’t exist? That may work for a while – a very short while, but for most of us, the minute we feel that sliver in there is the very minute we’re going to start working on it to get it out - even if it takes greater pain to get it out than you feel having it in. And oh, the relief you feel when it’s gone!
Well if you wouldn’t leave a sliver in your body, why would you leave a sliver in your soul?
The repentance that we’re learning through David’s example and through Psalm 51, is getting rid of the slivers in our souls, coming clean before God so that He can cleanse us from all unrighteousness, from every unrighteous thing in our lives, and bring us true joy and gladness.
Slide: “Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.” (Psalms 51:8 NIV)
That’s what David wanted to hear and needed to hear – and so do we. There’s a reason we build that into our worship of God: confession and absolution, the announcement of our forgiveness in Christ. We need to hear it and God wants us to hear it and know that it’s true – so hear it again and rejoice in it:
May Almighty God have mercy on you, forgive you all your sins through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen you in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep you in eternal life. Amen.
