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Location: Hattiesburg, Mississippi, United States

Sunday, April 02, 2006

Lent 5 2/2/06 Text: Psalm 51:10-15 Title: How Naughty Can I Be And Still Go To Heaven?

Lent 5,
Date: 2/2/ 2006
Title: How Naughty Can I Be And Still Go To Heaven?
Text: Psalm 51:10–15

Dear Lord Jesus, in your death and resurrection we find our life and resurrection. Comfort us Lord in that knowledge. Drive out all distractions from our minds so that we might hear, absorb and then live our lives ready and willing to obey you. Amen.
The Gospels during Lent have built up a dramatic tension as Jesus continues to approach the cross. Beginning with John’s invitation to “repent and believe” in Mark 1:15, proceeding with Jesus’ announcement that he must go to Jerusalem to suffer in Mark 8:31, his cleansing of the temple in John. 2:13–16, and his announcement that “the Son of Man must be lifted up” in last Sunday’s Gospel reading in John. 3:14, Jesus now says in today’s Gospel, “The hour has come”.
That same expectation is reflected in our Old Testament Reading for today, as Jeremiah writes, “The time is coming” in which the Lord would declare a “new covenant” for his people”.
Our Psalm for today approaches this tension from a more personal perspective. Rather than the working out of God’s covenant through history, today’s Psalm brings us back to God’s covenant with the individual sinner.
Now it would be easy to say that Psalm 51 as just one more Psalm in a long list of Psalms that have a general application to our lives, and in doing so we would miss its meaning
. So before we get into the verses of the Psalm today, we need to consider what precedes it. This Psalm was written by King David after Nathan had confronted him with his sin of adulatory and murder. It is not merely a spontaneous outburst of penitence done in private. It is much more than that, for more than likely David wrote the Psalm sometime later, probably when he wanted to put his thoughts down for the entire community of Israel to hear.
Psalm 51 is a painful public confession of David’s guilt and deep need for redemption, as well as a confident expression of his expectation that his sin would be forgiven. He knew that some of those who read his words would gloat over his sin, but he does not hold back from his confession for he is certain that God will not cast him away from his presence.
In the first six verses, which are not part of our reading, David confesses his miserable spiritual poverty as he writes, “My sin is always before me”. “You are justified when you judge”; “surely I was sinful at birth,” and “even from my conception”. It is clear that David is not attempting to justify his sinfulness or trying to plead innocence due to circumstances, He is not saying, “I just could not help myself. God made me this way.” No, he accepts full responsibility.
In the remaining verses which include our text for today, David reflects and rejoices on the amazing mercy of God, which gives him full and complete cleansing. But he doesn’t stop there for he asks that God empower him to tell others of God’s goodness.
David is so confident of God’s gracious desire to forgive that he uses imperatives such as, “Create in me . . . renew. . . . Do not cast me. . . . Restore to me”. He does this knowing that he is only asking God to do what God wants him to do and thus he will receive what he is praying for.
And that brings me to my sermon title, “How naughty can I be and still get to heaven?”
But before I get to it, I need to ask you a question. What’s the largest number of people to which you’ve ever had to admit a mistake? Most of us don’t go public with our sins. We might not go public, but we usually can’t fool our spouse, at least for long. He or she will know a long list of the ways in which we’ve failed. We can’t fool our children. Once they reach a certain age, they begin to become aware that mom and dad don’t always get it right.
We can hide our sins and our failures from most people, at least those outside of our home. Our co-workers don’t know how we act at home. Our neighbors don’t know what we do at work. Our friends at church can’t usually see anything but the church face that we have put on as we entered the building on Sunday.
I, nor anyone else can see into your heart. I can only see my own. But if you’re like me, then I know that you’re capable of thinking and saying and doing things that no one else would suspect. You’ve said things to your children that should never be said. You’ve thought things about your spouse or your friends or yourself that should never have been thought. For the most part our sins remain private, except for that occasional public slip.
David on the other hand couldn’t hide his sin like you or I can. God’s prophet Nathan confronted him in public. Everyone in the entire country knew what he had done. No doubt some of them thought it was funny. I am sure that there were those that made jokes about David’s adultery just like people today make jokes about the shattered marriages of celebrities and politicians. No doubt there were others that were deeply offended by his public sin. They probably condemned David had done and might even have suggested, or at least thought that he was unworthy to continue in his position. David’s sin was so public that people still read of it over three thousand years later.
It might seem like this Psalm is about King David, but it is not. It is about God and his grace in forgiving David. It is about the completeness of God’s grace. David writes that he knows that his spirit, which was filthy with sin, will be whiter than snow. He knows his bones, which were crushed by God’s judgment, will not only be healed, but they will also rejoice in God’s healing. David knows that God will fill his grieving spirit with pureness, and joy.
David’s repentance gave him great joy, but most people today still think repentance has to be a sad thing. There are some reasons for that. First of all that it the way we have been taught. For many people it started with their relatives way back when the Methodists were spreading throughout the country doing revivals those that wanted to be saved would sit on what was called “the anxious bench”. It was in the front down by the preacher. They hoped that his fiery preaching about hell and damnation would make them feel sorry enough for their sins and fearful enough of God’s judgment, that their confession would be sincere enough to win God’s forgiveness.
There are three kinds of people who come to confession each Sunday. The first are those who are just going through the motions for they know that God is pretty pleased with them, for after all they are not that bad when they are compared to other people.
The second group is made up of those who come to confession thinking that they really shouldn’t be there confessing their sins, because they don’t think they are sorry enough, or haven’t been made to feel guilty enough.
The last group is made up of those who know who they are. They know of their sinfulness, their complete inability to please God and look forward to throwing themselves on God’s mercy. There are big differences between those groups, but they all share one thing. They think that repentance has to be sad thing, that if you don’t feel sad you are really not repentant.
If a person comes to confession only expecting condemnation from God, it is a sad thing. But, if they come to confession fully expecting God’s forgiveness, knowing that God is giving out his gracious forgiveness to them because of Jesus’ death, then there is no reason to be sad. Yes, there is the regret that we feel because of our actions in the past, but there should be not sadness, for we know, just like King David knew, that God will, “restore to us the joy of his salvation”.
Let me share with you this morning something that happened several months ago. I was at a local event when a young lady walked up to me and started talking. As we talked she told me that the little boy with her was her son and that he had been born out of wedlock. She told me that she was a Christian and that when her congregation had found out she was pregnant they kicked her out for her bad moral behavior.
She went on to say that she was very hurt by their actions. She felt deserted by God and didn’t know what to do. She had quit going to church for several years, but she wanted to start going to church again. She just didn’t know if she was forgiven. She wanted my opinion.
Now I have to admit I was quite shocked, not because of what she had told me, but because she had unburdened her soul to me, a complete stranger. I was as equally shocked that a Christian church would do what they had done. I couldn’t believe it. Oh, I know there are some congregations that are law-driven, but I had never had actually seen one in action.
It was a powerful moment, one I will never forget. I told her that the congregation was wrong in what they had done, that that type of action was certainly not one that Jesus would have condoned.
That helped her a little, but she still wondered if God had forgiven her. I asked her if she knew that having sex outside of marriage was a sin and she agreed that she did. She didn’t offer any excuses. She just said that she knew it was wrong and wanted to get herself right with God again.
I asked her if she had been baptized and she said she had. I then reminded her that in her baptism she was made a child of God, something that no church could take away from her. I then told her something, which by the way all of you can do. I told her that because of Jesus’ death she was completely forgiven of her sin.
As she looked at me, you could see the joy in her eyes. She was finally free of the guilt that she had been carrying for several years, eight to be exact. She heard God’s forgiveness. She had faith in those words and now was almost overcome with joy. It had nothing to do with me. It was all God’s work in his words of forgiveness.
I have the feeling from joy I saw in her that day, that she is going to make a wonderful church member because she was on her way to following King David’s example by telling others of God’s grace. She was free of guilt and wanted to share her love for Jesus with others.
I was hoping that she lived in this area so I could tell her to come and see what goes on at Saint John, how we are forgiven sinners forgiving other forgiven sinners. When I found out she didn’t live here, I was disappointed to say the least.
That brings me back to my sermon title. “How Naughty Can I Be And Still Go to Heaven?” That is a hard question to answer for it is the wrong question to ask. A better question would be to ask how naughty can a person be and still be forgiven? That is a question that can be answered. The answer is, there is no sin or naughtiness that God did not forgive when he died on that cross.
“If that is true?” You might be asking yourself a question that I asked for most of my life, “If God forgave all sins when he died on the cross, why is it then, that every Sunday we gather together to confess our sins, ask God for forgiveness and then receive absolution?”
We do it because when you have confessed your sins and heard the announcement of the forgiveness of those sins the burden of guilt and shame are taken from you, and that is a good thing. For, it is only then that can live your life as God has intended for you to live it, free of guilt. Go in peace. Your sins are forgiven. Amen