Turn Around – Walking God’s Path

“Turn Around – Walking God’s Path” was preached at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown, PA on November 7, 2021. You can hear/watch this sermon here, starting at 38:38.

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Psalm 51

Prayer for Cleansing and Pardon

To the leader. A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.

1 Have mercy on me, O God,
    according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
    blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
    and cleanse me from my sin.

3 For I know my transgressions,
    and my sin is ever before me.
4 Against you, you alone, have I sinned,
    and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are justified in your sentence
    and blameless when you pass judgment.
5 Indeed, I was born guilty,
    a sinner when my mother conceived me.

6 You desire truth in the inward being;
    therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
    wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
    let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins,
    and blot out all my iniquities.

10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,
    and put a new and right spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me away from your presence,
    and do not take your holy spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
    and sustain in me a willing spirit.

13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
    and sinners will return to you.
14 Deliver me from bloodshed, O God,
    O God of my salvation,
    and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.

15 O Lord, open my lips,
    and my mouth will declare your praise.
16 For you have no delight in sacrifice;
    if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.
17 The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;
    a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

18 Do good to Zion in your good pleasure;
    rebuild the walls of Jerusalem,
19 then you will delight in right sacrifices,
    in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;
    then bulls will be offered on your altar.

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We turn to 2 Samuel chapters 11 and 12 for a background to our Psalm today. I’ll summarize the story.

King David – the once boy shepherd that killed the giant Goliath with a sling and a rock – was a good man. He was a man after God’s own heart. He was a good king who loved God and every day tried to model God’s love for the kingdom he ruled. But David was also human; try as he might, he wasn’t perfect.

One afternoon, David sees this woman bathing across the way, and in his lust, he inquires about this woman that he found beautiful. He is told, “That is Bathsheba, wife of Uriah.” David, trapped in his lust, sends his messengers to fetch the wife of Uriah for him and the two soon go to bed with one another.

Bathsheba then becomes pregnant.

To face these consequences, David creates a plan. As Uriah is one of his soldiers in his army, David decides to have Uriah killed in battle. He orders his men to set Uriah in the front lines of the fighting, and then have all of his men pull back from the fight, leaving Uriah exposed and alone. So that is exactly what happens… and Uriah is killed in battle.

When the news came to Bathsheba, she grieved for the death of her husband. But David still sent for her and the two were soon married.

Because of all of this, God was angry with David.

At first, David didn’t care; he didn’t get caught and that was all that mattered.

God then sends the prophet Nathan to David. And Nathan tells him this story:

“There were two men in the same city—one rich, the other poor. The rich man had huge flocks of sheep, herds of cattle. The poor man had nothing but one little female lamb, which he had bought and raised. It grew up with him and his children as a member of the family. The lamb was like a daughter to him.

One day a traveler dropped in on the rich man. He was too stingy to take an animal from his own herds or flocks to make a meal for his visitor, so he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared a meal to set before his guest.”

David, being the righteous king that he was, explodes in anger after hearing this. He tells Nathan that the rich man deserves to die for what he has done to the poor man! How dare the rich man have no pity and take the one, beloved lamb from the poor man!

And Nathan, a prophet of God, looks at King David and says, “You are the rich man… you are the one who murdered Uriah and took his wife to be your wife.”

David then sees his sin and confesses to Nathan and to God.

Psalm 51 is attributed to his confession as David seeks forgiveness following his sinful acts against Uriah and Bathsheba. It’s the Psalm we heard today.

We’re in this four-week series on the practice of confession. While confession is not a sacrament to us like it is in the Catholic church, it is a hallmark of reformed worship. Every week, we participate in the corporate confession of sin and the assurance of pardon, knowing that we are found both guilty and forgiven by God. Even when we say the Lord’s Prayer, we ask of God “to forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”

Last week, Stephen started our series on confession by encouraging us to look inward and see the sin in our own lives. It’s not easy, but it’s the first step to maintaining a healthy relationship with our Creator. When we see our sin, we are able to confess it. And so we do, we name the ways in which we have wandered off from God’s path and the ways in which we have missed the mark. Stephen encouraged us to ask ourselves the question, “Where am I at in my relationship with God?”

Sin are the moments in which we stray from the path God intended for us, and when we stray, we strain our relationship with God and with one another.

Which takes us to the next step. After we see that we have strayed from God’s path and after we confess that we have, we are called to repent. Repentance, or the Greek word metanoia, means to “turn around.” To repent of the things we have done wrong, we must recognize that when have strayed to the wrong path, we must turn around and find the right path; the path that God intended; the path that means we are in right relationship with God and our neighbor.

While David needed the prophet Nathan to help see his own sin, it is David who then confesses and repents for what he has done. Listen to his words to God in Psalm 51:

“Have mercy on me”

“Blot on my transgressions”

“Wash me thoroughly”

“Cleanse me from my sin”

“Against you I have sinned”

“I have done what it is evil”

“Create in me a clean heart”

“Put a new and right Spirit within me”

“Restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain in me a willing Spirit.”

David’s confession is for his relationship with God to turn around and be put on the right path once again. It’s all individual; written in first-person. It’s not a collective “we” here. It’s David seeing, confessing, and repenting his own sin; his own individual sin.

We must do the same. See, confess, and repent our own individual sins.

While it might be easier to name the sins of others or to criticize communal sins, we know Jesus tells us that must first see the log in our own eye before pointing out the speck in another’s.

Individual confession is necessary for us to be in right relationship with God and with one another. Individual confession helps us turn around and move back to the path that God intended for us.

As I said, last week, Stephen posed for us the question: “Where am I at in my relationship with God?”

This week, I encourage each of us to ask ourselves the question: “What kind of life does God want me to live?”

If we ask this question of ourselves, it helps us frame what confession is truly about.

Confession is not about feeling bad about ourselves. Confession is not about believing that we are awful. Confession is not about believing that God could never love us again.

Because none of those are the kind of lives God wants us to live.

Instead, confession is a moment to be honest with ourselves and with God so that we can be in right relationship with God and with one another. Healthy confession moves us closer to the peace found only in right relationship with God. This is the kind of life God wants for us.

This is a journey for each of us. We will continue to stray from God’s path over and over, but the love and light that is God calls us to turn around and return to the right path.

Hear these words from Psalm 119: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”

That Word became Flesh in Jesus Christ. The steadfast love of God became human so that we could see what holy love looks like. In the presence of Christ – a light so bright and a love so deep – the right path is never too far nor too dim for us to return. Being in right relationship with God is a covenant promised and always possible. Always.

What kind of life does God want you to live?

Whenever we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we hear Christ inviting us back to be in right relationship. In Baptism, we received the power of the Holy Spirit to do so, trusting in the mercy of God.

Remember this: we are saved by God’s grace; our actions or effort have no part in our salvation. The lives we are intended to live must be in response to this salvation by grace. Confession and repentance are necessary steps to living these lives. It’s in these moments in which we call upon the Holy Spirit for us to be continually transformed into new and grace-filled lives; lives that are holy and joyful; lives that are in right relationship with our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.

“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

Thanks be to God. Amen.

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