Brown's Daily Word 3-10-11

Good morning,
Praise the Lord for this new day. One of the highlights for the mid-week for us is our Mid-week gathering at the church. We have been meeting every Wednesday since 1990. The Lord blessed us with a very special Wednesday gathering. The food and the desserts were delicious. The fellowship was sweet. The study was inspiring and provocative. The psalm that is designated for Ash Wednesday is Psalm 51.
Psalm 51 is one of the few psalms where we are given the historical background. The inscription reads, "A Psalm of David when Nathan the prophet came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba." That identifies clearly for us the incident out of which this psalm arose. It was the time when David became involved in the double sin of adultery and murder while he was king. He had walked with God for many years. In that time he had gained a reputation as a prophet, a man who understood the deep things of God; and he had 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.
The interesting thing is that David himself records this sin for us. It must have been a painfully humiliating experience for the king. 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). In fact, for about a year he tried to live with a guilty conscience.
I love Edgar Allen Poe’s story, “The Telltale Heart”. In that story, the main character has committed murder and he buried the body of the victim in his basement, but 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.
That must be how David felt when he committed the sins of adultery and murder. The guilt he felt became almost unbearable. So God sent the prophet Nathan to David. God loved this king far too much to let him continue to try to hide his sin, thus damaging himself and his entire kingdom. 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 comes this beautiful fifty-first Psalm. He wrote, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” (Psalm 51:10).
The concept of forgiveness, of being made right with God, is pictured in the Bible in many different ways, sometimes as a new birth, sometimes as the crossing out of a debt, sometimes as the breaking off of a heavy chain. The picture of forgiveness that David uses here is perhaps the most common picture throughout the word of God -- he describes it as a cleansing. “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” A few verses earlier, he had written, “Wash me thoroughly from my sin, and cleanse me from my sin.” He continued, “Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” (Psalm 51:7).
Sin is dirty, even filthy, and it stains our lives. Isaiah put it this way, “But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousness is as filthy rags…” (Isaiah 64:6). The NCV translates the first part of that verse, “All of us are dirty with sin.” There is the need for us to be cleansed, so David sid, “Purge me, purify me, wash me.” David did not say, “Change the way I behave”, but he rightly said, “Change my heart.” To paraphrase David, “Even if I never ever commit murder or adultery again in my entire life, there’s still something here that’s a problem. So God, I want you cleanse my heart. I want to cleanse the things I think about, my priorities, my desire to serve you -- all of it.”
The most beautiful part of this story is that God did that for David and he’s willing to do the same for any of us. God’s delights in having the opportunity to forgive us. When he forgives, he removes it "as far as the East is from the West". He will not continue to hold it over our heads.
I heard the story a few months ago about the owner of a Rolls Royce. True or not, it certainly sounds as if could be true:
That great British automaker takes great pride in the reliability of their handcrafted automobiles. An obviously wealthy owner of a Rolls Royce took it to Europe on an extended trip. While traveling in France the car had some mechanical problem. He called the Rolls Royce factory and asked that they send out a mechanic immediately to fix the problem. The company responded in royal fashion. They put a mechanic on a private jet with all of the necessary tools and flew him over to France to make the repairs. The owner was so wealthy that he was not at all concerned about the cost, and would spare no expense to make sure that his beloved Rolls Royce was properly repaired.
After several months he realized that he had not received a bill. He had his secretary contact the Rolls Royce factory to inquire about the bill. He received this reply from the Rolls Royce company: In typical British fashion, it said simply, "We have no recollection or record of any Rolls Royce having ever had a breakdown or being in need of repair anywhere in France."
That reminds me of how God treats us when he forgives us of sin. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
In this Lenten season, may we deny ourselves, take of the cross and follow Jesus daily.
In Him,
Brown


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsCp5LG_zNE&tracker=False

Saturday evening worship service.
Location: First United Methodist Church
53 McKinley Avenue
Endicott
Sponsored by the Union Center United Methodist Church, 128, Maple Drive, Endicott

Saturday, March 12, 2011
6 PM Coffee Fellowship

6:30 PM Worship Service
Worship Music: Laureen Naik
Speaker: Rev. Bill Turner