Brown's Daily Word 2-18-10

Good morning,
The Lord blessed us with a wonderful gathering for Ash Wednesday. One of the traditional readings for Ash Wednesday is Psalm 51. Psalm 51 is one of the few psalms where we are given the historical background behind it. The inscription reads, "A Psalm of David when Nathan the prophet came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba." That clearly identifies for us the incident out of which this Psalm arose.
It was in reference to the time when David, while he was king, became involved in the double sins of adultery and murder. He had walked with God for many years and had gained a reputation as a prophet, a man who understood the deep things of God. He had also established himself as the long-time spiritual leader of his people. Then, suddenly, toward the end of his reign, he became involved in this terrible sin.
One of the interesting things about all of this is that David himself recorded this sin for us. It must have been a painfully humiliating experience for the king to do so. In Psalm 32 David recorded how he felt during that terrible time when he was trying to cover up his sin. He said, “When I kept things to myself, I felt weak deep inside me. I moaned all day long.” (Psalm 32:3, NCV). For about a year, he tried to live with a guilty conscience.
In Edgar Allen Poe’s story, “The Telltale Heart”, the main character has committed murder and buried the body of the victim in his basement. However, the murderer is unable to escape the haunting guilt of his deed. He begins to hear the heartbeat of his dead victim. A cold sweat pours over him as that heartbeat goes on and on, relentlessly, getting louder and louder. Eventually, it becomes clear that the pounding which drove the man mad was not in the grave below but in his own chest.
We get the feeling that David felt the same way when he committed the linked sins of adultery and murder. The guilt he felt became almost unbearable, so God sent a prophet to David. God loved this king too much to let him go on covering up, and thus damaging himself and his entire kingdom by this hidden sin. So God sent the prophet Nathan to David. When David was confronted, he acknowledged the terrible sin he had committed. He fell on his face before God, and out of that experience of confession came this beautiful fifty-first Psalm. “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” (Psalm 51:10).
The picture of forgiveness that David used here is perhaps the most common picture throughout the word of God, describing it as a cleansing. “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” A few verses earlier, he wrote, “Wash me thoroughly from my sin, and cleanse me from my sin.” (Psalm 51:2). And then in verse 7, “Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” (Psalm 51:7).
“But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” (I John 1:7)
In Christ,
Brown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSNiI7PgD-8