Our Journey Through Lament

Lament Psalms #4 - Our Journey through Lament - Psalms 50 and 51 Our focus in this final sermon is to see how the Lament Psalms help us in our own personal journey with God. We can't always appropriate the Psalms directly for ourselves, because of who they were written for and who they are written about. They were written for ancient Israel in the first instance, to help God's people come to terms with their own situation after the exile, still waiting for the promises of God to be revealed. They were written about the Lord's anointed, a righteous one who suffers, and whom the Lord rescues by snatching victory through the jaws of defeat. This paradox of the Lord's anointed establishes the paradigm for God's people - God will save them in the most unlikely way. What that means for us then is that when we read the Psalms, we need to read them through multiple times - perhaps three or four times. First of all, to hear the Psalm on the lips of David, perhaps also to hear it on the lips of the faithful Israelite sitting languishing after the exile. Then to ask how the Psalm points to Jesus, then finally, to take it upon our own lips. David's Lament Israel's Lament (Reading Canonically) Jesus' Lament (Reading Christologically) Our Lament That's what we are going to do now, as we look together at Psalm 50 and 51. Psalm 50 and Psalm 51 are both psalms about sin, justice, sacrifice and forgiveness - they explore the same themes, but from 2 different perspectives. The perspective of Psalm 50 is the perspective "from above" - that is, the perspective from the throne room of God, the righteous judge of all the earth who calls his people to account. The perspective of Psalm 51 is "from below" if you like -the perspective of the sinner who knows he stands under the just judgment of God. Psalm 50 Verses 1-7 of Psalm 50 explain the context of the psalm: God coming forth to judge his people - God is the radiant perfection of light, shining forth, who calls his people to account. Those familiar with the OT sacrificial system may well have thought that burnt offerings for sin would provide a sufficient protection for God's people in the presence of a holy God. But Verses 8-13 of this psalm make clear that sacrifices are not going to be the answer to the problem of human sin. The Lord says in verse 8. "Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you; your burnt offerings are continually before me." There is no shortage of sacrifices being offered. But God neither needs nor wants their sacrifices to atone for their sins. What God wants is faithfulness from his people, what God wants is their obedience. There are two kinds of people contrast in the psalm - the "faithful ones" - verse 5 and the wicked. The wicked are described in vv.16-18 Psalm 50 goes on to catalogue their wickedness in the following verses. The wicked think that they have gotten away with their evil deeds, but God tells them in v.21 that their day of reckoning has come. "Now I rebuke you, says the Lord and lay the charge before you." If you are one of the "wicked" reading this psalm, it looks pretty bleak. There is no obvious way back to God for the wicked. The bottom line of the psalm is simple - God will deliver his faithful who call to him in the day of trouble, but the wicked will not escape the day of God's judgment. I am stressing this point, because Psalm 50 provides the context for reading Psalm 51, which as we know is about a wicked man - a murderer and adulterer - who does NOT get what his deeds deserve - contrary to the expectation of Psalm 50. We need to read Psalm 51 through multiple times. Firstly, let's read it from the perspective of David, the sinner who knows that there is no sacrifice he can offer, nothing to make God forgive him... what does he do? Well, he begins with an Appeal ... for both mercy and for atonement. The appeal for MERCY begins in verse 1: "1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions." Notice there the basis of the appeal is both on the mercy of God and the steadfast love (HESED), the covenant faithfulness of God. That is, David is not appealing on the basis of his righteous life. This is not the David of Psalm 17, who wanted God to vindicate him as a blameless man. David in Psalm 51 knows that he cannot rely on his own righteousness. His appeal can only be based on God's mercy - that God would give him what he does not deserve - and God's HESED, his faithfulness to the covenant he made to David. And this appeal for mercy is also an appeal for atonement. There are lots of different metaphors in verses 1-10 that describe what David wants God to do with his sin. 1 blot out my transgressions 2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. 7Purge me with hyssop.....and so on. David wants God to take away the objective guilt of his sin, the stain of his sin and the guilty feels because of his sin. David's appeal is for atonement, in all its dimensions. Confession The appeal of the psalm is followed by confession in verses 3 and following. David says: 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. That confession which continues in subsequent verses leads to David's repentance in verse 17. He recognises that God doesn't want burnt offerings and other sacrifices but verse 17: Repentance 17 The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. This psalm comes from a broken and contrite heart. In this psalm we see David as the repentant sinner who appeals to God for mercy and atonement. But it is important to realise that this is not just David, the average Israelite, but David - the Lord's anointed, who has sinned greatly. This gives a deeper significance to verse 11 in particular 11 Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. David had seen what had happened the last time God had taken his Holy Spirit from the Lord's anointed, from King Saul. Because of Saul's sin, God withdrew his Spirit and rejected Saul as King and ended the dynasty of Saul. David doesn't want to end up like Saul, and so he is calling on God to be faithful to his promises David's offspring would reign on Israel's throne. David is trusting that God will be faithful, despite David's terrible sin. But let's now read the Psalm a second time - this time from the perspective of ancient Israel, who know that they have suffered the exile as a result of terrible sin. Ancient Israel can look back at what happened to David, and see that, despite his terrible sins, that sinner had been forgiven and restored. They know that they themselves have suffered in exile as a result of terrible sins. So this psalm is meant to give them hope - if God forgave David on the basis of his mercy and his HESED - his covenant faithfulness, it means that God can forgive them too. Even though they have languished in exile and there is no temple; no king; no sacrifice; no priesthood, their plight is not hopeless - because God will be faithful to his promises. This second reading - this second perspective - explains the last two verses of the psalm 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. These two verses don't make sense on David's lips, but they do on the lips of Ancient Israel meditating on David's experience. This is Israel taking heart from the experience of David, the forgiving sinner, and looking forward to the time when God will forgive them and restore them. Now we need to read the psalm from a third perspective - to see how it points to Jesus. Sometimes a psalm points to Jesus because Jesus takes the psalm on his own lips - he becomes ths speaker of the Psalm. That is not the case with Psalm 51. Jesus is not the speaker of this psalm, but rather the one the psalm is speaking about, in three ways. Firstly, Jesus is the resolution of a key tension in the psalm. The tension is reflected in verse 4. 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. If God is justified in his sentence and blameless, then how can God possible justify a sinner like David - how can he atone for David's sins? The answer is Jesus. The New Testament helps us to see that Jesus is that resolution between the justice of God and the mercy of God. The cross is where justice and mercy meet. Secondly, Jesus resolves how there can be Atonement without a bull. The language at the beginning of the psalm - "cleanse, blot out, purge" all derives from the sacrificial system. The prescribed way to cleanse, blot out and purge was through a bull or other such offering. But Verse 16 says "you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased." Jesus is the answer to that conundrum. How is it that God atone through sacrifice - cleanse, blot out, purge? It is through offering himself as the one perfect sacrifice for sin. Thirdly, it is only Jesus who ultimately can provide what David asks for when he prays "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me". What David ultimately needs - and what you and I need - is not merely something that will deal with the guilt of our sin that is "out there", but to deal once and for all with the corruption that is within us, the thing that makes us sin. A clean heart and a new spirit only come with the New Covenant that Jesus brings. Jesus gives us his own spirit within us to create a heart that is clean, and a heart that desires to love and serve God. 4th perspective - as the faithful followers of Jesus. And so, in light of these three perspectives, we can now read the psalm one last time, as the faithful followers of Jesus. And I want to suggest to you that reading it this way actually modulates the key of the psalm - we sing it in a different register. We shouldn't read it as though we are terrible sinners like David - nor are we Israel languishing in exile. We are those who read it through the lens of Jesus. Our appeal is the same as David's - on the basis of God's mercy and his covenant faithfulness. But for us, the mercies of God have come to us in Christ, and his the covenant faithfulness is to the people of new covenant people. Like David, we need to come before God with genuine lament over our sin, with genuine confession and genuine repentance. But for us, the difference is that we come with confidence in the atoning work of Christ. This particularly is where we hear the modulation of the key. We can't pray Psalm 51 without tweaking the words. When we pray this psalm, we don't say "God create in me a clean heart" - we say - "You have created in me a clean heart" "You have put a new and right spirit within me". Verse 11 changes tense as well. "Don't cast me away" becomes "I know you will never cast me away from your presence, you will not take your holy spirit from me". And it means that we, even more so than David, and more so than ancient Israel, have great confidence to praise God in the words of verses 14 and 15 14 my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance. 15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. Because of Jesus, Psalm 51 has been transformed from the register of lament to the register of praise.