As for me, I shall call upon God,
And the Lord will save me.
Evening and morning and at noon, I will complain and murmur,
And He will hear my voice.
He will redeem my soul in peace from the battle which is against me,
For they are many who strive with me (Psalm 55:16-18).

Lately, I have been day and night committing to the Lord every thought, word, plan, and action. My intuition, intelligence, and good intentions are powerless and ineffective. I don't know enough. I don't discern well enough. I don't have enough confidence in my own intentions toward one person or another. But still I call daily upon God, and I find hope. The Lord will save me. He will hear my voice and redeem my soul in peace from the battle which is against me. Even though there are many who press against me, I will hope in the Lord. 

Friends, I am not under attack, but I am stricken. I am in the midst of those who bite and devour each other, but I feel the pain they inflict on each other. Therefore, I do not consider my attackers mortal but spiritual. Satan is sowing discord and through bitterness and pride, he strikes at me from every side. Every side demands justice, but no one seeks mercy. Every side demands accountability, but no one seems remotely interested in prayer for each other. Such a spirit is not from God but from the enemy. And against him my only, but I believe effective, arsenal is the Word of God and prayer. 

So in the Lord alone I trust and hope. I am powerless except for His grace. I praise God for the grace He has given me in Christ Jesus my Lord. I harbor no bitterness. I desire no restitution. I pray to the Lord, "Father, fogive them, for they do not understand what they are doing." How precious these psalms are to me in these days! They give voice to the anguish of my heart, and I pray for God's peace. To God alone be all the glory!

In Psalm 55 David expresses anguish over his accusers and attackers. But his anguish is greater and deeper because the one attacking him is not an enemy but his close friend, his companion, one with whom he shared sweet fellowship and with whom he worshipped the LORD:

For it is not an enemy who reproaches me,
Then I could bear it;
Nor is it one who hates me who has exalted himself against me,
Then I could hide myself from him.
But it is you, a man my equal,
My companion and my familiar friend;
We who had sweet fellowship together
Walked in the house of God in the throng (Psalm 55:12-14).

They say that emotional pain can rise higher than physical torment. Certainly, betrayal by a close friend can rise to this level. I've known some of this kind of hurt, even from a pastor and friend. But I responded badly, for rather than simply crying out to God, I allowed bitterness to fester within my heart. Because of this, even when I spoke truth, it caused some to question my motives and ignore my words.

But I'm not seeking sympathy. The Lord comforts me. Yet such hurt pales in comparison to the hurt of loss, particularly the loss of a loved one, and particularly the loss of your own child. 

The other day, my wife and I watched a very touching movie called Courageous. Part of the story depicted a father, who had a nine-year-old daughter. He obviously loved her, and she adored him. But it also appeared that he did not take great pains to spend much time with her and was more concerned with appearances than celebrating his daughter's childhood. 

At one point, they are both sitting in the car and the girl's favorite song comes on the radio. She asks her dad to turn up the volume. Suddenly she gets out of the car and asks her dad to come out and dance with her. But he is embarassed at the thought and just tells her to dance by herself while he watches her. She pleads with him, but no. He'll simply watch her. (Here is the scene).

A short time later he hears that his daughter was killed by a drunk driver while coming back from a party at a friend's house. Suddenly, nothing else matters to him. Wave upon wave of grief comes over him. He would not see her graduate. He would not have the joy of walking her down the isle. Then all of it climaxes at the nearest and most gut-wrenching thought: "Why didn't I dance with her?!"

Someone made a little video that captures this father reminiscing about his daughter and imagining what might have been had she lived: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzY4Wi7VYw8

Now, rather than become bitter, the father chooses to thank God for the nine precious years God allowed him to spend with his daughter. Here is a scene, where he tries to relive the event of his daughter asking him to dance with her. But this time, he gets out of the car and dances with her: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVoh3xJQYuQ.

Friends, rather than be bitter, we can choose to be better. Rather than relive our hurt, we can rewrite our history. My heart resonates with the psalmist's hurt and reminds me to find my refuge in the Lord. When John the Baptist was told that Jesus was baptizing more disciples than him, he responded, "A person can receive only what is given them from heaven" (John 3:27). He was not bitter, but he praised God for allowing him to serve his purpose in the time he was given. We should all have such an attitude toward things.

I praise God for what he has promised.
I trust in God, so why should I be afraid?
What can mere mortals do to me? (Psalm 56:4, 10-11).

If we fear God, we don't need to fear men. If we trust in the Author and Sustainer of life, we don't need to shrink from death. Since God always keeps His promises and never lies, we don't need to be rattled by ever-changing circumstances. For if God is for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31). 

David repeats the refrain of his trust in God, and we should too. He trusts God's promises and His power. The only thing that he needs to know is that God is on his side. So he declares, "This I know: God is on my side!" (Psalm 56:9).

We too need to trust God's promises and His power. He has promised us resurrection to eternal life (Colossians 3:1-4). He has demonstrated His power to do it by first raising Jesus Christ from the dead. And as Christ has been raised, we too will be raised to eternal life, our mortality will take on immortality, the perishable will be clothed with the imperishable, death will be swallowed up in victory, and we will inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 15:50-58). This is our firm hope. 

In this series of psalms, David bemoans danger from foes and friends alike. And we just came off from a series of penitential psalms, where David bemoaned the danger of his own sinful nature. In the midst of these crises, David understood his only hope is in the LORD:

But now, Lord, what do I look for?
    My hope is in you (Psalm Psalm 42:5). 

Even when that hope is difficult to see, David engages in self-speak so that he might persuade his own soul to cling to it:

Why, my soul, are you downcast?
    Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
    for I will yet praise him,
    my Savior and my God (Psalm 42:11; 43:5).

Friends, let us too embrace our hope in God even though we encounter enemies on every side and even within. Let us remember that all these enemies are mortal, limited in what they can do to us and passing away with the rest of this world.  Let us remember that our God is true, who has promised us salvation, and that He is strong, being able to accomplish it for us. Let us hold fast to this promise:

Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus (Philippians 1:6).

David always amazes me with his ability to come to God through song lyrics and say just exactly what I wish I could say to him.  Because then I can come and pray the psalm, and the Lord comforts me that way. There was toooo much meat in this passage of psalms and so much that I could have thought more about, but the verse that caught my eye fits my situation perfectly.

Psalms 51:16 and 17 say: For you do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; you do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, A broken and contrite heart--These, O God, you will not despise.

How many people spend their lives pursuing earthly riches, and go into church and throw their money at God in repayment for their sins? How many people work and work trying to get to heaven, when Jesus is the only way to heaven? That bespeaks of arrogance. Self pride.

God doesn't require anything from us that He doesnt already have when he asks us to offer part of what we make to him. We get out of it what we put into it. God doesn't require us to sing and dance on our head when He calls to us to be His child. But what sacrifice is acceptable to God?

TO LAY IT ALL DOWN ON THE ALTAR!  Our relationships, our finances, our time, our job, our desires, our wants, our needs, the big things, the small things, our emotions, our sins, our children, our bodies, and so on.

So why don't I get this? Its in my head, but my heart hasn't gotten the memo. It still wants to pursue worldly things. I know it is human nature, but I find my humanity at war with God far more than I am comfortable with.

In David's case, He is acknowledging that His sin is not just against Uriaiah and Bathsheba, but principally against God. Because David started a chain reaction that started when he decided to stay home from war and look where his eyes weren't supposed to go, to adultery, to murder, and finally to repentence.

Why doesn't the Bible just leave this stuff out? The Bible could say that every man written about in it, is good, that he was perfect. The life of David and every other person that we consider to be "Christian" is all written down, good and bad, from Adam to Jesus and beyond. The reason is because the Bible would be nothing but a useless fairy tale. Instead, it holds nothing back, from rape to incest to murder to adultery to deceit. We are left gaping at the depravity of man since time began. And then there is a righteous, faithful, God who loves us and saves us from that depravity. We are sinners still, but we have been saved and called to live a life that goes above and beyond. To lay it on an altar and leave it there.

A sacrifice truly worth it, if I can just wrap my head around it.

So why can't I get that? is it just a lack somewhere inside of me? I have been praying about this.

Psalm 51 is a reminder to us that just as we, as NT saints, hope in God's grace, so too the OT saints trusted in that same grace. Nowhere in the Law of Moses was there pardon for adultery. Nowhere was there pardon for murder. The penalty for both was death. The sacrifices and offerings covered only unintentional sins, not the premeditated kind of which David was very guilty (2 Samuel 11). Yet, we read in 2 Samuel 12:13, "The LORD has taken away your sin. You are not going to die." This is remarkable! How is this possible? Jesus once taught his disciples, "What is impossible with human beings is possible with God" (Luke 18:27). When Jesus forgave sins throughout his ministry, the Pharisees often attacked him by saying, "Only God can forgive sins" (cf. Mark 2:7). What they said was correct, but it should not have been an attack but an acnowledgment that standing before them was God incarnate ("in the flesh"). ONLY God can forgive sins. And only God CAN forgive sins. So, David begins Psalm 51 (NASB) with the words,

Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness;
According to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions.

Again, that David recognizes forgiveness is within God's jurisdiction alone is echoed in his words,

Against You, You only, I have sinned.

He sinned against Bathsheba. He sinned against Uriah the Hittite. But they did not establish the Law that David violated. David broke God's Law and so only against God did he sin. And so only God, who gave the Law, could forgive him. It is God alone, who can "purify me" (v. 7a), "wash me" (v. 7b), "blot out all my iniquities" (v. 9), and "deliver me from bloodguiltiness" (v. 14). David understood that there was no provision in the Law for his sins. There was no sacrifice or offering for his sins:

For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it;
You are not pleased with burnt offering (v. 16).

David was a man condemned to die by God's Law, and God would be totally right to judge him (verse 4b). And David had no recourse except just to humble himself, acknowledge his guilt, and wait for God's final pronouncement. But to his great relief, God saw his self-abasement and chose to extend grace. So David can declare,

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise (v. 17).

It is humble confession and a repentant heart that God accepts. One of the most wicked and violent nations in the world was Assyria. Jonah was sent to pronounce judgment on them. But the king and the people humbled themselves before God, and God forgave their sins (Jonah 3:10). The most wicked king in Judah, who was even more vile than the evil kings of Israel, was under the sentence of God's judgment. But he too humbled himself, and amazingly God forgave his sins (2 Chronicles 33:12-13). Are you amazed? Jonah was. And if what happened to Manasseh happened to Hitler, many would be amazed as well. But why? Why are you and I amazed? We might say it is because they deserved death and judgment. But the unspoken side of this reasoning is that we believe that we deserve life and salvation. Unless we have a vision of God like the prophet Isaiah did in Isaiah 6, we tend to regard ourselves much too highly. And while no one would say this outright, I suspect many Christians really believe that they deserve to be saved more than others they know.

Friends, before the grace of God came to us, we "were all dead in our trespasses" (Ephesians 2:1) and walked about as condemned people just passing the time until death and judgment (John 3:18). I encourage you to reflect on Romans 3:9-18 to get God's perspective on our moral and spiritual condition before Christ saved us.

Therefore, as David, as the Ninvevites of Assyria, as Manasseh, even as the wretched tax collector in Jesus' parable (Luke 18:9-14), let us humble ourselves before the unapproachable light of our most holy God and recognize that our lives and salvation are all of His grace: "It is by grace you have been saved!" (cf. Ephesians 2:4-7).