"Hello" from the Pastor

 Pastor’s Corner

Shalom y’all. 

Here is a devotion on Psalm 51. 

Reading psalms like this one gives us the idea that Lent is a very gloomy season. Perhaps it is. I think when we really listen to the word of God, 

we find that this is very good news. We get a perspective on our humanity through Psalm 51. This is the prescribed psalm for Ash Wednesday, 

the day we put ashes on our heads and remind ourselves that we are dust and to dust we will return.

We are sinners. But I hear you say, this psalm was written in the first person. So, it’s talking about some other poor soul who needs God’s mercy,

steadfast love, and washing. If your bible includes the superscripts at the beginning of many of the psalms you may see that this is a psalm of 

David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone into Bathsheba. This story is in 2 Samuel 11-12.

It is a horrific abuse of power that rivals anything we hear about in our daily news on today’s horrific abuses of power. And when David is called 

out on it, he declares, “I have sinned against the Lord.” It is this similarity to v. 4 of the psalm that gave it the association with David.

However, the psalm was probably written around the period of the exile and used as a corporate prayer of penitence. It is a prayer of confession 

of sin for the whole community. It proclaims that we are sinners and that God is gracious, good, kind, faithful, merciful, and true.

This is the word in the first verse translated as steadfast love or loving kindness. The Hebrew word is chesed and is a key word in understanding 

who God is. We can bow before the majesty of God and confess our sins because we know that God is trustworthy and in God’s loving kindness, 

we will be forgiven. Without the assurance of God’s chesed, we would be better off to run as fast and as far from God as we could rather than 

approach God in penitence.

Jesus told us a story in Luke 18 of two people who went up to the temple to pray—they approached God penitently. One person prayed, “I thank 

God that I’m not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or—well, name whatever sin you want to here. And concluded the prayer by listing 

all the good and upright things that person did regularly. But the other person bowing down said, “God be merciful on me, a sinner.” Jesus asks 

us whose prayer was heard and who was justified before God.

v. 3-4: For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. 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.

This is the effect of this psalm. We know the depths to which we have all fallen in

sin and we know that our lives are judged by God because we know God’s word

and we have a relationship with the righteous God. But we can’t say that we only

sin against God. There is no sin that does not affect other people.

v. 5: Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.

Sin is the condition of humanity. This goes all the way back to the creation story.

The first people tried to be like God and Paul tells us in Romans that the sin of

humanity is self-centeredness. Indeed, we are born guilty. We want to be like God 

and live as if we are in control of our lives.  This is where the temptation to power comes from. 

This is the temptation the devil had for Jesus during his 40 days in the wilderness. 

This is the temptation we have when we think we don’t sin, or that our sins are not as bad as

other people’s sins—Thank God I’m not like that person—or when we think that

we can overcome our sins by trying harder to be good and pious people.

v. 7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Washing brings up images of our baptism. Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3 “Very

truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water

and Spirit.”

v. 9 Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities.

This idea prefigures our justification through Jesus Christ. After Jesus’ death and

resurrection, he commissioned the church to go out and baptize and teach others

to be his disciples. Then he ascended to the Father to intercede for us. This way,

when God looks on sinful humanity, God sees the perfect humanity of Jesus, and,

for a time, we are spared the awful wrath of God.

But God doesn’t leave us in our sins.

v. 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.

This is our sanctification through the Holy Spirit. By the creative power of God, a

new spirit, a new heart, a new life is placed within us.

And finally,

v. 17 The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Whatever we do in response to this incredibly good news of the love of God in

Jesus Christ, this is the essential bit. We must live according to the relationship

with God that God has set out for us. We are all sinners, and it is only by the

grace of God that we are saved. Everything else we do is done in gratitude to God

for that one incredible thing.

Blessings,

Pastor Tom