A Gift for Another Day

I have something that I want to give you. I'm not sure it's going to be useful for you right now—it might be—but it could well be useful for you in the future. In fact, I can almost guarantee that one day you will need this. And the problem is, even though I'm going to give it to you now today, I'm worried that when the day comes and you do need it, you may not be able to actually find it or remember where you put it. So as I do give it to you, I want you to put it in a safe place and remember when you got it: Webster, Lavender Bay, September 2026. Don't forget it. It may be useful to you now, but as I look out at your faces, it's possible to use it now, although I'm thinking to myself, maybe not right now. I'm not sure, though. I wouldn't want you to use this flippantly. Don't wear it out on just silly things, because it would be most useful to you in a time of crisis. Keep it in your back pocket for when you reach that moment in your life when you realize you've done something, or you've not done something, or you've said something, or not said something, and you just feel ashamed.

A few years ago, Paul Kelly, the Australian songwriter, wrote a song, and the words go like this: "All the kings and queens in the Bible, they could not turn back time. So what chance have I of a miracle in this life of mine? I only want one day to unsay the things I said, and undo the thing I did. 24 little hours, oh God, please wipe them all away, and I promise I will change, if I could start today again." And maybe it's that you say to yourself, "I did that thing, and I can't undo it, and I said that thing, and I can't unsay it. And if I could just turn back time, if I could start today again, I would, but I can't, and it's done, and it's there, and it's me." And you've had a glimpse into your character, into your heart, and you just wish it wasn't true, but it is true.

Mostly we self-justify, and we just explain these things away: "It's not really my problem, this happened, and this happened, and this happened, and that's why this happened, but it's not really my problem. It's usually because of somebody else. Someone else has caused this, not me. It's my circumstances that have caused it, or I was too stressed, that's what caused it. And if those things were different, it just wouldn't have happened." But sometimes we see the reality. We look at ourselves and say, "No, it was me. I did that. I can hardly believe I did it, but I did it." Like looking in the mirror and you don't like what you see, and it's a glimpse into the darkness deep within the heart. That's true of us all.

God has given us Psalm 51 for the moment of crisis. Let me read some of it to you; we've read some already:

"Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me."

A moment of crisis. If you look at the caption right at the top of Psalm 51, it says: "When the prophet Nathan came to David after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba."

The story of David and Bathsheba, it's very well known, great fodder for movies. I believe the movie in the 1950s starred Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward. I never saw it, it was long before I was born. And it's been kind of Hollywoodized, and it's often Hollywoodized. Leonard Cohen wrote a song about it, became a hit for Jeff Buckley in 1994. Some of the lyrics go like this: "Your faith was strong, but you needed proof. You saw her bathing on the roof." Get sung in karaoke bars all over the place.

I want to say two things about it. The first thing I want to say is under the title: Into the Heart of Darkness: The Story Behind This Psalm.

It begins with David. David was a great man. He was described in the Bible as a man after God's own heart—that's a pretty big deal. He was God's warrior king, he was supposed to be the writer of wrongs, he was a leader who led others in such a way that they had a deep loyalty to him. You might think that's a rarity these days—a leader that would instill deep loyalty in their people, a national leader.

Bathsheba is a Hittite woman, a foreign woman. She's in a foreign land because she's in Israel, and her husband Uriah is away fighting for David. So she is an outsider in Jerusalem, so she is vulnerable. And she's taking a bath. And the king, who is lazy, who should have been with his soldiers—that's where kings should be—now he's on the roof of the palace. He's the master of all he sees. He's walking around on the roof. In the original language, the idiom is something like this: he was walking backwards and forwards, getting nowhere—"loitering with intent," we might call it. And he sees her bathing, and she is attractive to him, and so the glance becomes the stare. Here's the spoiled king; he's used to getting whatever he wants, and he makes a few inquiries and he sends some servants to get her.

And you probably know how it ends, but let me ask you this question: do you think she was able to give her consent in that relationship? For who holds the power? He's the king, right? The king can do whatever he wants; who is going to stop the king? In our 21st-century world, we have a word for that—the situation where a woman is not in a position to say no, we've got a word for it. He is the king; what power does she hold? The king gets what he wants, right?

And then one thing leads to another, and turns out that she's fallen pregnant. And David is like, "Well, this is going to be hard to explain." So he decides to call her husband home from the front to go home and be with his wife, but he won't go. The foreign fighter shows more integrity than the king. So finally, in order to cover it all up, David organizes for her husband to go out to the very front of the battle and organizes for all the soldiers around him to withdraw, and he's left to be killed. This is David, the greatest king of Israel and the ancestor of Jesus.

The prophet Nathan confronts David. It's a beautifully cutting story; you should read it sometime. He makes it clear in this bitterly ironic parable, and David realizes, he's cut to the heart, and he turns back to God. And that's when we get Psalm 51: moment of crisis.

And this is how it goes, verse 1: "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions." God, in your mercy, don't give me what I deserve. Blot out my transgressions—you know, like Liquid Paper, remember that, where you could just cover up the mistakes you'd made?

Verse 2: "Wash away all my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin." David at that moment realizes that his tawdry, putrid life is such that he needs washing.

Or down in verse 9: "Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity." It's like, "God, I can't bear you to see this. For you to shine that white-hot glare of your holy gaze on me is too much to bear."

Now when you read it, and you know the backstory which I've just told you, it's easy to get a little bit cynical, isn't it? I mean, we Australians, we tend to be a bit cynical of our leaders, especially when they're caught doing something that they shouldn't have been doing, and we sort of say to ourselves, "It's typical, isn't it? It's typical of leaders." Be careful, because underneath that cynicism quite often is our own self-righteousness where we say, "I could never do that. I'm better than that." One of the things that can happen with people who are basically decent people is they think people like David are hypocrites to ask God for forgiveness after what he's done, and we judge them to be hypocritical.

I don't know if you remember the story about the Watergate incident, and it brought down a presidency in the United States, Nixon. And one of the key advisers to Richard Nixon was a man called Charles Colson who went to jail for his part in it. And apparently in jail he turned to Christ, and he became very influential as a Christian when he got out of jail. And I remember that story being told at a church not too dissimilar from this, and at the end there was a very, very dignified man who said, "What Colson did was unforgivable. Unforgivable." And I think really what he was saying was, "I can't do that. I couldn't do that," when the Bible is saying, "Yes, you could." And if you do that to yourself, and you say you couldn't do it, when you do, you'll say, "Well, I can't turn back to God because it's hypocritical." And then you'll be lost if you can't turn back to God.

David sees something of himself, but more than that, he sees something of God. He sees his own heart of darkness, but he sees something of God. And Psalm 51, it's kind of like he goes backwards and forwards—he goes from himself to God, from God to himself, backwards and forwards, his own self and God's character.

So that's my second point: Into the Heart of God. The first one's Into the Heart of Darkness, secondly, Into the Heart of God.

Look at verse 1: "Have mercy on me, O God." He knows God is one who delights in goodness and mercy. He knows the character of God. He knows God is a God of unfailing love, of steadfast love, a God of great compassion. God is moved within Himself, He's moved in His guts when He sees the most self-centered and destructive person turn back to Him. When you are staring into the dark abyss of your soul, that is when you ask God for what you don't deserve: "Please don't give me justice, I need grace. Be gracious to me according to your unfailing love." And you know there is a God who delights in goodness and mercy.

Or verse 2: "Wash away my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin." He cries to the God who can cleanse and wash, and we know how He did that too, don't we? We know that about a thousand years after David, a descendant of David would come, Jesus, and He would die. He says in verse 7: "Cleanse me with hyssop, and I shall be whiter than snow."

Or verse 9: "Hide your face from my sin, blot out my iniquity." God can hide His face from my sin not because He's corrupt like those political cover-ups where they cook the books, but there is wonder in that He somehow pays Himself for us. So there is forgiveness and there is hope.

And then lastly, David asks God to change him. See verse 10: "Create in me a pure heart, O God; renew a steadfast spirit within me." See, that's the thing when you're in that place and you want to change and you want it to be different. We would love that power; we'd love the power to be able to change at that moment when you stare into your heart and you say to yourself, "Does it have to be like this? Do I have to be like this?"

And we know God is on the side of the victim, we know God is on the side of the oppressed, the fatherless, the orphan, we know God is on the side of the downtrodden. But what about the oppressor? Is there any hope for the oppressor? Is there any hope for the one who's caused this? And God says, "No, I can do that. I can change people." And it's often the sign that this turning back to God is legitimate because they say, "It's not just I want to be forgiven, I actually want to be different. I want it to change."

So on the day when you do hit the crisis and the voice in your head says, "What are you going to God for? You can't be serious, can you? How convenient, asking God for forgiveness after all you've done." Don't listen to the voice. Do God the justice of believing Him when He says you're forgiven and restored. Do God the justice of believing Him. My Son's paid for all that. God can deal with David's sin, He can deal with yours.

Christianity is a religion of radical grace—God treating us in ways that we need, not in ways that we deserve. It's God's lavish, unconditional, extraordinary embrace, and it's the grace of God that saves us from despair. So press on in that. In the small moments and the big moments, press on in God's grace.

So there you go, that's my gift to you. Well, it's not from me, it's from God. This is God's gift for you. Keep it for a time when you really need it. How are you going to remember it? Psalm 51: half of 100, 50 + 1.

Let's pray:

"Heavenly Father, we are thankful that these things are recorded for us, that we don't just have to guess about your character, but we know, we can see, we can read, we can hear. Help us to have this deep sense of your goodness and grace so that we might go to you freely when we need you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen."

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