September 14, Psalms of Penitence

Lesson: Psalm 32

Sermon Title: Benefits of Contrition

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INTRODUCTION:

Legal Eyesight (1)

The old man was a witness in a burglary trial.

The defense lawyer asked Sam, "Did you see my client commit this burglary?"

"Yes," said Sam, "I plainly saw him take the goods."

The lawyer asked again, "Sam, this happened at night. Are you sure you saw my client commit this crime?"

"Yes," said Sam, "I saw him do it."

Then the lawyer asked, "Sam, listen: you are 80 years old and your eyesight probably is bad. Just how far can you see at night?"

Sam replied, "I can see the moon-how far is that?"

  1. How far can we see?

    1. We can see the moon.

    2. How is it possible that we can see the moon, but we cannot see our sin?

    3. Perhaps it is because we may not understand the meaning of sin?

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MAIN BODY

  1. I have a disease.

    1. This disease is common to all humanity.

    2. Everyone is afflicted with this disease.

Romans 3:21-3 (NRSVA)

21But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, 22the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, 23since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God;

    1. I know of only one person who ever lived that was free from this disease.

    2. The disease is sin.

      1. Sin is not an action, nor a thought.

      2. Sin is a state of being from which thoughts and actions spring.

Romans 7:14-25, NRSVA

14For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. 15I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. 17But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. 19For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. 20Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.

21So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. 22For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, 23but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.

    1. There is only one way of escape from this dilemma.

    2. The way is found in the 32nd Psalm.

  1. The title of this Psalm is significant, Of David. A Maskil.

    1. A Psalm of David, giving instruction, relative to the guilt of sin, and the blessedness of pardon and holiness or justification and sanctification.

    2. It is supposed to have been composed after David's transgression with Bathsheba, and subsequently to his obtaining pardon.

      1. David writes in verses 1 and 2

1Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. 2Happy are those to whom the LORD imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit, (Psalm 32:1-2, NRSVA).

      1. In verses 1 and 2 four evils are mentioned

        1. Transgression

        2. Sin

        3. Iniquity

        4. Deceit (Guile)

    1. Each word has its own implications.

      1. The first signifies the passing over a boundary, doing what is prohibited.

      2. The second signifies the missing of a mark, not doing what was commanded; but is often taken to express sinfulness, or sin in the future, producing transgression in the life.

      3. The third signifies what is turned out of its proper course or situation; any thing morally distorted or perverted. Iniquity, what is contrary to equity or justice.

      4. The fourth signifies fraud, deceit, guile, etc.

    2. Because of the impact on us, it is necessary to deal with all the aspects of sin

      1. David writes in verses 3 and 4

3While I kept silence, my body wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
4For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.

      1. Unconfessed, or harbored sin has both a physical, psychological and spiritual affect on us.

    1. We cannot leave anything out.

      1. Seventeenth-century Puritan theologian Thomas Watson argued that repentance was a spiritual medicine made up of six special ingredients. "If any one is left out, it loses its virtue." (2)

        1. 1) Sight of sin,

        2. 2) Sorrow for sin,

        3. 3) Confession of sin,

        4. 4) Shame for sin,

        5. 5) Hatred for sin,

        6. 6) Turning from sin.

      2. That's a lot and he has it right.

    2. There are difficulties in this process that need to be faced and overcome.

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  1. The correction of sin is difficult.

    1. Confession is difficult because it involves the ego.

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright's vanity was legendary. At the age of 89, he agreed on the witness stand in court that he was the world's greatest living architect, and when his wife demurred, suggesting that he should be more modest, he rejoined, "You forget, Olgivanna, I was under oath." (3)

      1. The ego is the I.

      2. I am the most important.

      3. I am right and never wrong.

      4. During the Watergate scandal, Leon Jaworski was the special prosecutor. (4)

Jaworski was a Presbyterian elder, and one Sunday he found himself at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, the historic Washington church where Peter Marshall had been pastor. As he sat in worship, he noted the Lincoln pew, which is set aside in that church for presidents to sit in when they visit there for worship, and it's the pew in which Lincoln sat during the Civil War years when he came to church. Suddenly there was a hush in the congregation, and down the aisle walked Mr. Nixon with an usher who seated him in the Lincoln pew.

Leon Jaworski, sitting several pews behind that pew, recollected in his mind all that he knew from having listened to the Nixon tapes. He knew that the president could be indicted for criminal activity beyond any shadow of doubt. There he sat in worship. He wondered in his own mind what would happen if the president suddenly stood up and said to the pastor of the church, who was Dr. George M. Docherty at the time, "Dr. Docherty, I would like a moment of special privilege," and then would turn to the congregation and say:

"I want to say today that, as president of the United States, I have sinned before God and I have lied to you. I have asked his forgiveness and I now ask yours. I have come to this church today to make full disclosure of who and what I am and what I have become. I promise you from this day forward I'm going to do better."

Leon Jaworski said if he had done that as he had turned it in his mind, we would have probably gathered the president up and put him on our shoulders and carried him back to the White House. It is a thought worth thinking about for all of us to acknowledge our sins.

        1. He could not.

        2. We know the rest of the story.

        3. In a way it is our own story.

    1. Contrition is difficult because it involves and act of the will.

      1. On of our Pilgrim ancestors, Richard Baxter observed:

"When God should guide us, we guide ourselves; when he should be our Sovereign, we rule ourselves; the laws which he gives us we find fault with and would correct, and if we had the making of them, we would have made them otherwise; when he should take care of us (and must, or we perish), we will care for ourselves. . . . We are naturally our own idols."

      1. Of course, we must be careful that in accenting the power of the "will" we do not lapse into, a "little-engine-that-could" doctrine ("I think I can, I think I can, I think I can").

      2. Cartoonist/children's book author Shel Silverstein lampooned this philosophy recently in his version of The Little Engine: (5)

"He was almost there, when - CRASH! SMASH! BASH!
He slid down and mashed into engine hash
On the rocks below...which goes to show
if the track is tough and the hill is rough
THINKING you can just ain't enough! "

      1. This is what may happen to us when we think we can, on our own, without any help, achieve God characteristics.

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    1. Penitence is difficult because it requires emotion.

      1. Poet Thomas John Carlisle in Jonah wrote:

The word came
and he went
in the other
direction.

God said: Cry
tears of compassion
tears of repentance;
cry against
the reek
of unrighteousness;
cry for
the right turn
the contrite spirit.

And Jonah rose
and fled/in tearless
silence.

        1. Jonah, at first could not feel emotionally any need but his own.

        2. He would go through a hard experience that would enable him to express his emotions.

      1. We ought to be able to cry tears of personal need and compassion.

St. Anthony, the father of monasticism in the early fourth century, writes to his disciples that they should weep in the sight of God. In the Rule of the Master, the monks are told that crying should always accompany penitence. In the sixth-century Rule of St. Benedict, the monks are told that crying should accompany heartfelt prayer. Not only were tears one means of prayer, according to Benedict, they were the only pure form: We must know that God regards our purity of heart and tears of compunction, not our many words. (6)

      1. While the church must rediscover its spiritual voice, it still must be able to summon something more articulate than the testimony of the 19th-century camp-meeting brother who proclaimed: "Brethren, I feel -- I feel -- I feel -- I feel -- I feel -- I can't tell you how I feel, but oh! I feel, I feel!"

        1. We do have to feel.

        2. We must have more than feeling.

      2. Albert Einstein noted (7):

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.

        1. We need the wonder.

        2. We need to marvel at the generosity of God.

    1. Repentance is difficult because it requires change.

      1. A bumper sticker reads:

Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

      1. Maya Angelou, in Shambhala Sun says we have to move (8)

Sometimes we become lethargic out of fear. It's not really laziness so much as it is timidity. We'd rather bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of, when in truth the place where one is standing may be untenable, it may be dangerous, it may be stultifying and it's better to just step on. You know, you have to move.

      1. Thomas Merton suggests that part of the difficulty in crawling out on a limb is that we're afflicted with what he calls a "spiritual cramp." (9)

He writes, "The things we really need come to us only as gifts, and in order to receive them as gifts we have to be open. In order to be open, we have to renounce ourselves; in a sense we have to die to our image of ourselves, our autonomy, our fixation upon our self-willed identity. We have to be able to relax the psychic and spiritual cramp which knots us in the painful, vulnerable, helpless 'I' that is all we know as ourselves.

"The chronic inability to relax this cramp begets despair. In the end, as we realize more and more that we are knotted upon nothing, that the cramp is a meaningless, senseless, pointless affirmation of nonentity, and that we must nevertheless continue to affirm our nothingness over against everything else - our frustration becomes absolute. We become incapable of existing except as a 'no,' which we fling in the face of everything. This 'no' to everything serves as our pitiful 'yes' to ourselves - a makeshift identity which is nothing."

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CONCLUSION:

  1. We have the practical theology of confession in the 32nd Psalm

5Then I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not hide my iniquity;
I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,"
and you forgave the guilt of my sin.

6Therefore let all who are faithful
offer prayer to you;
at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters
shall not reach them.
7You are a hiding place for me;
you preserve me from trouble;
you surround me with glad cries of deliverance.

8I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go;
I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
9Do not be like a horse or a mule, without understanding,
whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle,
else it will not stay near you.

10Many are the torments of the wicked,
but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the LORD.
11Be glad in the LORD and rejoice, O righteous,
and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.

    1. The Psalm outlines for us the benefits of contrition.

    2. As C. S. Lewis noted (10):

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: It would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

Amen!

1. Received from Thomas Ellsworth. The Good, Clean Funnies List [gcfl-info@gcfl.net]

2. The Doctrine of Repentance (1668), 18.

3. Neil Levine, The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright (Princeton: PUP, 1996).

4. Dr. W. Frank Harrington, "Does the Oval Office Reflect Who We Are?" Peachtree Presbyterian Pulpit, 1998.

5. --As referenced in Martin E. Marty's Context.

6. -Tom Lutz, Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1999), 46-47.

7. Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (New York: Crown, 1954), 11.

8. Maya Angelou, Shambhala Sun, January 1998, cited in Utne Reader, March-April 1998, 39.

9. Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (New York: Image Books, 1968), 224.

10. C. S. Lewis, quoted in Good News, May/June 1995.

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