Joel Snider's Sermons from FBC Rome

September 9, 2007

Forgive Me

Psalm 51:1-11

Our youth are on a retreat this weekend. Thinking about them being gone reminded me of a time long enough ago that I had not even met Cherry. I was a youth minister and had taken a group on a retreat of our own. It was the last night of the retreat, a time typically when there was a worship service, and if someone was going to voice a new commitment or rededicate their life or whatever that might be, that was when it was going to happen.

We were in the large gathering room of the retreat center. In the course of the service, there was a teenage girl who really felt moved. She comes to the center of the circle, confesses some lack of appreciation for some of the other youth in the group, and then she started to say, “I love everybody.” She made the big expansive motions to show that she loved everybody in the circle. She repeated it a couple of times. Because that didn’t seem big enough, she said, “I love everybody here and I love everybody everywhere.” It was very, very heartfelt and, unfortunately, followed by a witty comment by one of the boys. To this day, I don’t know whether he just was uncomfortable with the moment and felt like he had to deflect it or whether he really was wise beyond his years because as she said, “I love everybody,” he said, “Loving everybody is easy; it’s loving somebody that’s hard.” And that’s true. Loving everybody is easier than loving somebody.

This young man, wherever he is today, in that moment caught something that is very true about trying to live the Christian life and that is that usually it’s easier to like the teachings of Jesus in general than it is to practice them specifically. The illustration of loving everybody, I love everybody but don’t you ever find that it’s hard when you run into somebody, it just gets a little tougher.

Think about commitment to the poor. I think this is a tremendously sensitive congregation to the plight of the poor. Many of you are involved in numerous ministries that do something good in the name of Christ for people in need. It is very easy to say, “I love the poor. I read what Jesus says about, ‘I was hungry and you fed me; I was naked and you clothed me; I was a prisoner and you came to see me.’ I believe in that. I care about people who are underprivileged.”

Then you run into somebody on the street, say a belligerent panhandler who is not going to let you go until you give more than you really wanted to or if you work in one of these ministries and you do something that you think is a nice act, and the person you perform this act to or something you give to them is not appreciative. In fact, they have a sense of entitlement and they are just really not happy with what you gave them. You think, “Here I am trying to do something in the name of Jesus,” and you realize it is a lot easier to love the poor and care about the poor, in general, than it is to love them in particular.

Pray for enemies. I don’t know that I have ever met a Christian who didn’t think Jesus was serious about praying for enemies. So everybody says, “That’s a good thing; we ought to pray for our enemies.” If we were to announce that we were going to have a prayer meeting one night this week and we are all going to get together and pray for members of Hamas or we are going to pray for insurgents who set off bombs and wound U.S. troops in Iraq, I dare say there wouldn’t be a very big crowd because we don’t really have much compassion for those people. Praying for our enemies, in general, is good; praying for somebody specifically that has wounded, killed, hurt or works against people we care about, I don’t know if I am interested in that or not. It is very easy to consider the teachings of Jesus in general, in broad, in the big, but when you focus it down to love, forgive, care about, or do something specifically for an individual, it’s a little bit harder.

The same thing is true about forgiveness. I don’t think I have ever met a Christian who does not believe that God forgives sins. Everybody believes that. Everybody believes that Jesus came and died on the cross for our sins. It is an expression of God’s love because God wants to remove whatever barrier is between us, and by faith in Christ, that can be done. But I tell you I have met plenty of Christians who don’t think that their particular sin is included in God’s forgiveness. In general, yes, sure, God forgives sins but, typically, their response is “But you don’t know about my sin.”

They fall into different categories. Sometimes it’s the repeated failure. “I have prayed a hundred times for God to forgive me, and I feel like if I pray again for God to forgive me for substance abuse, pornography, or the affair that I just can’t quit in my life, I just feel like I ask God to indulge me. Surely, God can’t forgive a hundred failures. A hundred times I have asked for forgiveness and I just don’t think God is going to do that.”

Sometimes it is the depth of the failure. Sometimes we betray the relationships that are the most important to us or we betray the principles that have been most important in our lives and we have such an utter, utter sense of having done wrong that we simply can’t shake it. The thought and memory haunts us day and night. We wonder if God could ever forgive something as bad as that.

There are certain sins that seem to come to the forefront of society every once in a while that society, friends, co-workers, TV shows, etc. just reinforce, time after time. This is really bad. This is not just average bad. This is really bad, and if I have committed one of those sins, it seems like everywhere I go, people don’t mean to do it but the phrases that they use or the expressions or the stories that are on TV remind me that this is my sin and surely it is this sin that just keeps getting pushed out into the public. I wouldn’t use an example because I don’t want to add to anybody’s sense of failure on this, but surely my sin can’t be forgiven.

So we believe in God’s forgiveness in general. Sure. God can forgive everybody’s sin, but when it gets particular, when it gets to my sin, when it gets to the sins that I committed and things that won’t let me go, then I’m not too sure. Could God really forgive someone like me?

We come to the end of a series that has lasted most of the summer, a series on the “Promises God Keeps and the Prayers that God Answers.” We believe there are a lot of things that get promised in the name of God that are not true to scripture. The last one that we come to is that if we will pray for forgiveness, if we will pray, “God forgive me, a sinner,” that is a prayer God answers. It’s everywhere in scripture.

When I put the series together, Keith, the Minister of Worship, asked me about this particular passage of scripture and it really seemed to me that there could have been one of any number of scriptures.

First John where John writes to the early church and says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful to forgive us.” You can take the thief on the cross who doesn’t specifically ask for forgiveness, but he says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Jesus says, “This day you will be in paradise with me.”

Anything that has been between you and God is taken away.

And, of course, we come to Psalm 51, the model prayer in asking for forgiveness. I chose the text believing that it provides a way for us to read, articulate, and pray ourselves that God would forgive us our sins. The 51st Psalm does not occur in a vacuum. My Bible says right before the Psalm, For the director of music: A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.

Many of us know this story. We know the story of how David was out on his roof. He looked over and he saw a beautiful woman and he betrayed his kingship. It is very interesting. David, in his entire adult life, works to make the king of Israel an important and trusted position. How many times, if you read the story, does he have a chance to slay King Saul, and he says, “I will not raise my hand against God’s anointed me.”

David is a pretty smart guy and he knows that if he slays the king, then if he becomes king, somebody might slay him. He has worked hard to make the king of Israel a respected, and almost a holy, position, and he abuses it. He abuses his position to make this woman come over here, to make her have an affair with him. Then after people are going to find out because she is not expecting, he has a conspiracy to cover it all up. He puts her husband in the forefront of battle where he is killed, just as surely as if David had run him through with a spear himself.

Then he is so callous about it that when Nathan the prophet comes to tell the story of the two sheep owners, David never sees it coming. He never sees it coming because he is so sure he is good and right. He is so sure that he has done nothing wrong. This sheep owner that Nathan is talking about, he is going to judge him. Then Nathan points that bony finger at him and says, “Thou art the man. You’re the one who has done this.”

So the Psalm doesn’t just exist in a vacuum. It’s not that somebody sat down and said, “I’m going to write a really nice prayer to ask God to forgive me.” This is David pouring out his heart after the depth of his failure, after adultery, murder, and conspiracy. This is David at the depths saying, “God, forgive me.”

There are consequences, but God does forgive. God does forgive. God doesn’t just forgive sins; God forgives my sins and your sins.

When people say to me, “But you don’t know what I’ve done. But you don’t know how bad I am,” I have come to the conviction that the next time somebody says that to me, I am going to say, “Do you think God was naïve when God decided that he would forgive sins? Do you think that God did not know the depth to which our hearts can sink? Did God think when he said, ‘I am going to forgive sins’ that they would all be nice sins, clean sins, and polite sins? God is not that naïve.”

God understood completely what our hearts are like when he decided that he would send Jesus Christ to die on the cross that we might have the means of forgiveness of our sins.

Why don’t you feel forgiven? That does happen sometimes, doesn’t it? It does happen when we have prayed and prayed and sung hymns and read the Psalm and we still don’t really feel forgiven?

I am going to go back to a teaching that I have used in a sermon before because it has helped me so much. Emmet Fox, whenever I quote him I always say if you go get one of his books, he was a bit kooky, but he has some real nuggets of Christian wisdom in the midst of his writings. One of the things he says is that a lot of times when we pray, all we really do is worry about what we are praying about in God’s presence.

If we are worried about a financial problem in our family, we say, “Oh, God, I am afraid I am going to lose my house. Oh, God, please don’t let me lose my house. Oh, God, whatever happens, please don’t . . . .” We focus on the problem. Emmet Fox says when you pray, pray about the promises of God. Pray and say not, “God, I know this is so bad you can never forgive me,” but “God, I trust your promises. I trust what I read here. I trust what I read in First John. I trust what I read in the Gospels. I trust your promise to forgive my sin and I thank you.” Those are two entirely different experiences. One focuses on what is the problem that we want God to do something about and the other one focuses on the goodness of God, the faithfulness of God, the promises of God, and we quit worrying in God’s presence. I would say try that and see if that doesn’t move you toward some place where there is a sense that God does indeed answer the prayer, “God, forgive me.”

In fact, it is a pretty good way to think about praying about any of the things that we talked about in this series. That when we pray, focus on the good things of God. That when we pray, focus on the promises that God has indeed said God would keep and the prayers that God has indicated he wants to answer for you. So when we pray instead of longing for God, claim the promise that God will not leave us alone. Claim the promise that God will give the presence of his spirit. Claim the promise that God will take whatever it is that others may hand to us that is evil or bad and, in some way, shape it within his hands to provide something that is good. That God who is loving, merciful, and gracious, when we pray, “Forgive me,” says, “Of course. Rise, be forgiven, go, and sin no more.”

Copyright 2007. P. Joel Snider. All rights reserved.

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