HOW CAN GOD FORGIVE SOMEBODY LIKE ME?
ILLUSTRATION:
He had been FOUND OUT! By the time he decided to CONFESS his SIN the entire NATION was already talking. UNFAITHFULNESS, ADULTERY, LIES, MURDER! How could the LEADER of the nation, the man everyone ADMIRED, the one known as “the man after God’s own HEART,” allow himself to stoop to such DEPRAVITY and DECADENCE?
I’m sure that King David’s SPIN-DOCTORS were working FURIOUSLY trying to SALVAGE their King’s REPUTATION.
“The King had shown special interest in the WOMAN because of her DIFFICULT SITUATION. She was VULNERABLE. She was YOUNG. She was ALONE. He brought her into his HOME as one of his OWN. A NOBLE GESTURE. . . .And it was a SHAME that her HUSBAND was KILLED in BATTLE, but that is the PRICE of WAR.”
Regardless of all the EFFORTS in trying to COVER-UP the SINS the King had COMMITTED, the talk PERSISTED. (INQUIRING MINDS wanted to know more.) As the NEWS continued to SPREAD, the King could HARDLY SLEEP. He was SICK all the TIME. There were FEWER and FEWER public APPEARANCES. He couldn’t even CELEBRATE the BIRTH of his SON, because it was a CONSTANT REMINDER of how he took another man’s WIFE to be his own. The PRESSURE kept building.
Shortly after his son’s birth, a PROPHET named Nathan came to see David in II Sam. 12:1ff. He told him a STORY about: “Two men who lived in this city—one RICH and the other POOR. The rich man had great flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing except one little EWE LAMB that he raised and nourished and brought up with his children. The lamb was like a DAUGHTER to him. A traveler came to VISIT the rich man. The rich man wanted to prepare dinner for him, but was unwilling to take a lamb from his GREAT herd. So instead, he took the poor man’s little lamb that he loved deeply, SLAUGHTERED it and prepared it for his visitor.”
When David heard this he was OUTRAGED! “As the Lord lives,” he said, “this man is worthy of death! He must pay restitution four times over for what he did to this poor man’s lamb.”
Nathan said to King David, “YOU ARE THE MAN!”
A. Has there ever been a time when you’ve taken an HONEST LOOK at the SIN in your life or at your PAST SINS and have said, “How can God FORGIVE somebody like me”?
1. If you’ve never been there, this morning’s lesson may not do much for you. (TAKE A NAP!)
2. But if you’ve ever asked that HEART-BREAKING question either orally or silently, I don’t want you
to miss a single word of this lesson.
COMMENT:
This lesson is for the STRUGGLING SINNER—Christian or non-Christian. It’s for the person who has really BLOWN IT in life or is BLOWING IT now! It’s for the person who feels that you are so EVIL, so WICKED, or so IMMORAL, that God couldn’t possibly FORGIVE you for the things you have DONE or are DOING? You can’t even FORGIVE yourself!
B. We’re going to find out today, if God could FORGIVE a man like King David, he can FORGIVE you.
ILLUSTRATION:
When the prophet Nathan told David, “YOU ARE THE MAN!” the UGLINESS of his SINS crushed his HEART. And David PENITENTLY cried out, “I have SINNED against the Lord.” He didn’t say, “I was a VICTIM of CIRCUMSTANCES.” He doesn’t BLAME anybody but himself.
Then Nathan said, “The Lord has taken AWAY your SIN.” (What wonderful words those must have been to David.)
C. We ask, “Can God forgive somebody like me?” The answer is “YES!” He can and does.
MESSAGE:
COMMENT:
Nathan’s visit to David inspired the 51st Psalm. David’s CONFESSION of SIN was not only a sign of his REPENTANCE, but a statement of his CONFIDENCE and FAITH in God.
In Psalm 51:6-9 David makes four requests from the Lord, realizing the Lord’s answer.
I. REQUEST FOR WISDOM- v. 6
A. God wants truth. David- “Surely you desire truth in the inner parts . . .”
1. What is David’s confession here?
COMMENT:
David is saying, “I haven’t been HONEST. I’ve been HIDING and COVERING up my SINS. I haven’t been wanting to ADMIT it to God, to others, or to myself.”
ILLUSTRATION:
When is the last time you tried to COVER UP a sin? You LIED. You STOLE something. You went to a STRIP JOINT. You were UNFAITHFUL to your SPOUSE. You access PORNOGRAPHY on the INTERNET. You have a DRINKING or DRUG problem. What SIN do you try to COVER UP?
After COMMITTING the sin you felt BAD—in fact the GUILT almost OVERWHELMED you at first, but you just didn’t want to think about it anymore. You hadn’t really REPENTED of it, you just PRETEND that it NEVER happened.
2. David tried to FORGET what he had done—to erase it from his mind, but it kept gnawing at him. -Psalm 32:3- “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.”
COMMENT:
That’s what SIN does. You may FORGET about it for awhile, but then out of the blue the SHAME, the GUILT, the HURT of the SIN comes back to you. You feel MISERABLE. You’re tired of the COVER-UP, but your PRIDE gets in the way.
But what God wants from us is to be TRUTHFUL—to be HONEST about our SIN PROBLEM. He wants us to OPEN UP and ACKNOWLEDGE our GUILT. Only then can the
HEALING begin.
B. God can teach us WISDOM. David- “. . . you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.”
1. David realized how FOOLISH he had been.
ILLUSTRATION:
He is saying to God, “Lord, what I did was STUPID! I was foolish to look upon Bathsheba and LUST after her! I was FOOLISH to take her unto myself, and then tried to HIDE my sin. I was FOOLISH to have Uriah killed.”
Regardless of how APPEALING sin appears or how PLEASURABLE it may be, there is no WISDOM in SIN, only STUPIDITY!
2. David wanted WISDOM to overcome such FOOLISH acts of SIN in the FUTURE, and believed that God would give it to him.
II. REQUEST FOR PURITY- v. 7
A. David- “Cleanse (purify) me with hyssop and I’ll be clean.”
1. David’s SINS makes him feel so DIRTY!
a. Remember the first time you felt so DIRTY because of SIN?
ILLUSTRATION:
Was it the night you allowed your BOYFRIEND to TOUCH you where he shouldn’t?
Did you feel that way after having your first BEER?
Was it after SNEAKING into a THEATER to watch an X-rated movie?
Was it during a party at which you along with others stripped NAKED playing a silly game?
b. Could it be that there are STILL some SINS you COMMIT that makes you feel so DIRTY?
2. David doesn’t feel CLEAN anymore. So he asks God to cleanse him with HYSSOP.
a. Hyssop was a spongy-like plant that grew near or on walls, used for PURIFICATION under the old Sacrificial System.
1). It was used to sprinkle blood on the door posts during Egyptian bondage so that the ANGEL, seeing the BLOOD, would PASS OVER that house with his judgment.
2). It was used to CLEANSE a person who had DEFILED himself by touching a dead body.
3). It was used to CLEANSE a person of the terrible disease of LEPROSY.
ILLUSTRATION:
A few years ago I saw a woman named Marilee Strong being interviewed on a TALK SHOW. She had written a book called A Bright Red Scream about people who CUT themselves, BURN themselves, STARVE themselves, and in other ways PHYSICALLY PUNISH themselves because of SELF-HATRED.
Princess Diana was a CUTTER. She SLASHED at her ARMS and her TORSO and other places. There was a sixteen-year-old girl quoted in this book as saying that when she saw herself BLEEDING from the ARM it was a RELIEF, because everything in her was so FOUL and
REPULSIVE to her that its LEAVING her BODY gave her some HOPE.
b. David is using the hard LANGUAGE of being STAINED, REPULSIVE, UNWORTHY of the COMPANY of other people. He is UNCLEAN to be in God’s presence. And he needs HELP.
B. Thank God for His CLEANSING POWER!
1. David- “Wash me, and I will be WHITER than SNOW!”
a. I don’t care what SINS you have COMMITTED, God can take those sins that have DIRTIED your SOUL and WIPE them all away.
COMMENT:
Ananias said to Saul of Tarsus (Paul) who was guilty of TORTURING Christians trying to make them BLASPHEME the name of Jesus Christ, “. . . what are you waiting for? Get up, be BAPTIZED and WASH AWAY your SINS, calling on His name”- Acts 22:16.
b. Isaiah 1:18- “ . . . Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they
be red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”
COMMENT:
The SCARLET and CRIMSON color was a dye extracted from a WORM. Once a garment was DYED with this COLOR, it was INDELIBLE—it couldn’t be REMOVED.
A person, before accepting Christ as Lord, is STAINED with SIN that cannot be REMOVED apart from the BLOOD of Jesus Christ. It’s not the SHEDDING of our BLOOD that makes us CLEAN, but the SHEDDING of Jesus’ BLOOD on the CROSS. When we are IMMERSED (dipped) into the “BLOOD of Jesus through WATER BAPTISM we become WHITER than SNOW”- Rev. 7:14. The Greek word for BAPTISM (baptizo) means nothing but IMMERSION.
2. And as for the Christian who TURNS away from Christ and gets involved once again in the SINS of the world, he or she needs only to REPENT and seek God’s FORGIVENESS to be made WHITE as SNOW again.
3. Upon David’s REPENTANCE, he became PURE once again.
III. REQUEST FOR JOY- v. 8
A. David wanted to hear the sound of JOY once more. David- “Let me hear JOY and GLADNESS . . .”
1. What had he been hearing?
a. CRIES of Bathsheba at Uriah’s FUNERAL.
b. RUMORS of what the people were saying about their King.
c. GROANS of his own CONSCIENCE.
d. God’s Word- “You shall not give false testimony.” “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.” “You shall not commit adultery.” “You
shall not commit murder.”
2. For nine months, refusing to acknowledge his sins and REPENT, David lived MISERABLY.
COMMENT:
Now he asks for JOY once more. There was no true JOY in his moment of PASSION. His BONES cry from within, “We want to REJOICE! We want God!”
B. When one is GUILT RIDDEN, there cannot be true JOY.
1. Where there is no REPENTANCE there’s no
FORGIVENESS, and where there is no FORGIVENESS there’s no JOY.
ILLUSTRATION:
Have you ever tried to COVER UP a sin—cover up something that you knew was WRONG, but you couldn’t even ADMIT it to yourself?
How did you feel? Were you CONTENT and HAPPY? Did you have JOY and GLADNESS in your heart? Or could it be that you were MISERABLE deep down inside with the GUILT of your SIN gnawing at you? You were too AFRAID that someone may FIND OUT about it, to be JOYFUL.
It wasn’t until you truly REPENTED of that SIN and sought God’s FORGIVENESS that you felt RELIEVED and CLEANSED, and could ENJOY life again.
2. David desperately wanted to LAUGH again but couldn’t. Not until he REPENTED and RETURNED to God.
IV. REQUEST FOR FORGIVENESS- v. 9
A. David wants God to FORGIVE and FORGET what he’s done. David- “Hide your FACE from all my sins and BLOT out all my iniquities.”
1. FORGIVING and FORGETTING sins is what God does best and what He DELIGHTS in the most.
COMMENT:
There are those who look at their PAST sins or even the SINS they are COMMITTING now and think that there is no way that God can FORGIVE somebody like them. They can’t FORGIVE themselves, so they can’t imagine God FORGIVING and FORGETTING their sins.
2. David knew that even though he was so UNWORTHY, that God FORGAVE him of all that he had done and WIPED the SLATE clean.
a. Psalm 32:5- “. . . I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I
will confess my transgressions to the Lord’--and you forgave the guilt of my sin.”
COMMENT:
How do you think David felt? RELIEVED! OVERJOYED! CLEAN!
b. That’s how God wants us to feel when we TURN our sins over to Him.
B. Once you REPENT and turn your SINS over to God, He’ll never bring them up again.
1. Micah 7:18-19 (READ and COMMENT)
ILLUSTRATION:
A preacher on a gospel campaign was invited to go fishing with a member of a local church, a police officer, and his 16-year-old son. After dark, they sat around a campfire by the lake. The father began telling of the circumstances surrounding the ADOPTION of their only son three years before.
“He lived on the streets,” the man said. “He ran away from the ORPHANAGE when he was 10. I met him at Juvenile Hall after he tried to rob a grocery store with a POCKET-KNIFE when he was only 12 years-old. The judge warranted me custody of the boy, and a year later my wife and I adopted him.”
Reaching into his pocket the man pulls out a KNIFE. “Whenever my son COMPLAINS or acts UNRULY, I pull out this POCKET-KNIFE, the very one he used in the ROBBERY, to REMIND him of how he used to live and what he had done.”
The preacher noticed that the boy looked HURT and ASHAMED, and, in fact, a bit UNWANTED. He then kindly said to the man, “The Bible says that ‘God CASTS our sins into the depths of the sea.’ Do you think He brings them up against us again every time we COMPLAIN or act UNRULY?”
The man gazed upon the POCKET-KNIFE in his hand, looked at the HURT on his son’s face and said, “No, I suppose He doesn’t.” He then HURLED the KNIFE as far as he could into the LAKE!
2. One man said, “When God buries our SINS in the DEEPEST SEA, He posts a sign which reads: NO FISHING!”
CONCLUSION:
DO YOU BELIEVE THAT GOD CAN FORGIVE SOMEBODY LIKE YOU?
