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Psalm 25:11 - What's Better Than Forgiveness?
Last week I used the illustration of marriage, specifically of a wedding, that as the more we know our spouse the more we love our spouse, it s also true of God: the more we know Him the more we will love Him. When we are born again, it's like our wedding day. We love God and yet we barely know Him. In order for that love to grow, we have to know God more deeply. That's what David is getting at when he says, in Psalm 25:4-5, "Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation..." I decided I was going to use another marriage picture to illustrate this week's point--from the courtship before the wedding: A picture from the way a man will try to win the heart of a woman, hoping that one day she will be his bride.
Why does a girl catch a young man's eye? I remember when I first met Heather my first impressions were fairly superficial: she is pretty, she has all the right curves in all the right places and man she knows how to dress up for an occasion. Our first date was a classical concert and did she look good! I think God created women to be attractive to men so that we are drawn to them. I think God created women with poor eye-sight so that they are drawn to us men! But at that early stage in many relationships between men and women, one of two things starts to happen. Either the young man will grow to love the young woman, as I did Heather, and grow to love more and more about her, the little things, the imperfections, the idiosyncrasies, the laugh (I love Heather's laugh!), her character, gifts, way of thinking and so on, and so become really interested in what he can give her, how he can make her happy, or he may instead start to use the young woman for what he can get from her. I suppose this is the difference between love and lust. Love becomes most interested in what it can give, what it wants for the loved-one, isn't that right? But lust only wants what it can get for itself. In Psalm 25:11, which of these do you see in David for God? One is Spirit-led, the other is religious sin of the worst kind.
In Psalm 25, over the past two sermons, we have observed together how the Spirit had led David and his readers into a growing maturity of repentance. Two weeks ago we learned how David decided to light a fire in his heart for God that involved a prayer with three parts: declaring his trust in God, asking for God's guidance and believing in God's mercy and love. Then last week we saw that David moved from his prayer to meditation. God answered David's prayer for guidance, and honoured David's decision to believe in God's mercy and love, and began to teach David more about God's own character and nature. This brought David to conclude that God is truly gracious and faithful in all His ways. With this new appreciation for who God is, believers are led in verse 11 to now get back on their knees and pray in a fresh way. As we grow in mature repentance and in our understanding of God and our love for Him, two things must happen in us: we must see God as more wonderful than we imagined and we must see our sin as worse than we thought it was.
An immature Christian is someone who is still mainly concerned with having his sins forgiven, in escaping Hell, and in getting to Heaven. But as we are going to see from verse 11, this kind of Christian is in danger of treating God with a kind of religious lust-looking to see what he can get from God. Whereas David, and all mature and repentant believers, must come to know a love for God that is more interested in what God wants than what we want. When we first came to know Jesus in a personal way, we were moved by the Law to know we were sinners in need of forgiveness, and we were moved by the Spirit to see that through Jesus Christ we could be forgiven and have eternal life, and we believed. That's good. Every human being needs that. But we can't stop there. If you stop there, there is little proof that the change in your life is really the work of God. If God has really made you a new person through Christ Jesus, you will not go backward, you will not stop growing, you will keep growing.
In the year 1538, as the fire of the Reformation Gospel was catching blaze all over Europe, the Catholic Cardinal Sadolet wrote a long letter to the council of the city of Geneva, in Switzerland, trying to win them back under the control of the Catholic Church. At one point he talks about how precious eternal life is but kind of threatens that they can only have eternal life if they stay in the Roman Catholic Church. Pastor John Calvin wrote back, in response to that point, saying, "[Your] zeal for heavenly life [is] a zeal which keeps a man entirely devoted to himself, and does not, even by one expression, arouse him to sanctify the name of God."[i]In other words, when men and women want only eternal life it's a self-serving kind of lust, rather than a love for the name of God. That's what David is talking about, in verse 11, when he says, "For your name's sake... pardon my guilt..." But what does that mean?
I can show you very simply. In Genesis 6:4 it talks about "the men of renown". In Hebrew, that phrase is literally, "men with a name". In the ancient world, a man's name was his reputation. We speak like that sometimes too: so and so has a good name. When David asks God to pardon his guilt for the sake of God's "name" he is pleading on account of God's reputation, or glory. This is love for God not lust for His gifts. Just like in David's heart, in the heart of every Christian, God's glory must seem more worthy of our love than anything.
But here's the question I think some church-going, normal people might ask (I'm talking about those people, and there might be some here, who are mostly interested in the material world but who don't really see a problem with that): Is it really necessary for Christians to love to see the name of God glorified? Can't you be a saved Christian, have eternal life, and not be all full of "heavenly zeal", not be all "aroused to sanctify the name of God"? Yes and no: the answer is that you can be saved and not be passionate about wanting God's name to be glorified, but according to the Bible, if you are a Christian you won't stay that way.
In Romans 8:29, the Word says that God chose us and saved us with the goal of conforming us to the image of His Son. Okay, so what was God's Son zealous for? Just before His arrest, Jesus said this: "...For this purpose I have come to this hour. Father glorify your name" (John 12:27b-28a). That's the image God will conform all Christians into, with that zeal for His glory. God will eventually put a zeal for His glory in every Christian's heart. The Bible says that we who have already been born again, who know Jesus and trust in Him in a personal and real way, must not stop once we're born again anymore than a baby stops growing after birth! Because though God has started a fantastic new miracle in us, He is not yet finished with us. But if you stop growing, if you stop fighting sin in your life, your soul should quake in terror of the holy wrath of God: because you're probably not yet born again.
Romans 8:13-1713 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sonsof God.
Did you hear that? The simple fact of the Christian life is this: if you are a child of God, born again and saved by real faith in the Son of God, in Jesus Christ, then the Holy Spirit of God will lead you. He will lead you to become more zealous for God's glory. At the same time that happens in your heart, something else will happen, which I said earlier is the second thing that must happen in the heart of every truly repentant Christian: our own sin must become more horrible to us.
In verse 11, I want you to notice David's request: "...pardon my guilt". In the Christian's life though we are forgiven and justified once for all in Christ, there are still old sins that haunt our hearts and new sins that pull us away from loving God and then fill us with shame. How does mature and godly repentance handle this? If the Spirit is leading us, we won't minimize our sin. Does David ask God to pardon his guilt with the excuse that after all his sins were not all that bad? No. What does he say? "Pardon my guilt for it is great." That's a lousy negotiating tactic, but it is wonderful, Spirit-led, Christian maturity.
In Psalm 25:7 David refers to the sins of his youth-probably thinking of his adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband. But as I've said before, this psalm was probably written shortly after the news of the death of his son, Absalom, reached David, at which news he said those tragic words, "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!" What I didn't tell you was that about 9 months after the adultery with Bathsheba, the prophet Nathan came to David and confronted him with his guilt. And he prophesied to David about how his own son (who turned out to be Absalom,) would one day rebel against him:
2 Samuel 12:11-2011 Thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun.12 For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun.'"
The evil that Nathan prophesied God would raise up from David's own house was Absalom's rebellion, which ended in his death. I imagine that David was sick with grief over Absalom's death, but that he also remembered that these events happened as punishment for the adultery and murder he committed as a young man. He remembered Nathan's prophecy. And then I imagine that he got out his pen and began to write Psalm 25. I think there were tears all over the page when he got to verse 11. "...Pardon my guilt for it is great." Why did David believe his sin was so great do you think? Was it because his punishment was great? I don't think so. The clue to his frame of mind is in the first words of the verse-in his negotiating tactic: "For your name's sake, O LORD, pardon my guilt, for it is great." Don't make the mistake of thinking this is just a negotiating tactic! David is sincere in his plea and his purpose.
Let me try and make clear to you why David saw that the greatness of his sin was connected with the glory of God's name. John Piper has written that the most spectacular sin in history was "the brutal murder of Jesus Christ, the morally perfect, infinitely worthy, divine Son of God."[ii] In the language of Romans 1:23, 25, when our hearts turn away from God to anything else, that's sin. Killing Jesus was the most concrete example of this ever. But every sin amounts to killing Jesus in our hearts by rejecting Him, though He is infinitely more worthy of our love than anything, and wanting instead what is infinitely repulsive by comparison. David saw this: "My guilt is great!", because he saw this: "Your glory is infinitely greater!"
I know many of you have done some sort of home renovations in recent years. Imagine someone who bought an old, mouldy, disgusting house, who replaced the roofing, tore off the old rotten stucco and replaced it with new siding, soffits and fascia, who put in new windows and landscaped the yard. The house that used to be an eye-sore is now a pleasure to see. Now imagine that you receive an invitation for coffee at this person's home. What would you think if when you walk in the front door, you see that the carpets are beyond filthy, the walls are covered in black mould, the furniture is crawling with fleas and the floor is crawling with cockroaches, the wall paper is hanging down and the ceiling is caved in from old water damage? But is this not what we do, Christians, too often? We repent of certain sins, at least when someone is watching, but we do little about the heart that loves sin. What should we do instead?
As with David, confessing sin and asking forgiveness even as an old man, you and I will sin countless times this week. Every time we look for meaning or satisfaction in something other than God, it's as if we are choosing to murder His Son. It is treasonous rejection of our Creator and King. So let's stop trivializing and justifying our guilt. And let's ask God to lead us by His Spirit to love Jesus more than anything. As Hebrews 1:3 says, Christ Jesus is "the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature..." The LORD's "name" is Jesus! What's better than forgiveness? The glory of God in Jesus! I pray that every one of us will come to see Him as the infinitely worthy Treasure our hearts were created to love. So this week, when you realize your guilt again and again, ask God to pardon you not for what you get out of it, but for what He can get out of it. Ask Him to forgive your sin, not for your sake, but for the sake of His glory. Ask Him to pardon you in and for the name of Jesus.
[ii]John Piper, "History's Most Spectacular Sin," DesiringGod.org [http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/onlineBooks/ByTitle/2902_Historys_Most_Spectacular_Sin/], p. 5. Downloaded on November 14, 2009.
