Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
and sinners will turn back to you.
You’ve just had a long conference with your boss in which he lauds your praises, telling you what a good job you’ve been doing and how much he appreciates you. He not only gives you a raise, he promotes you to that job you’ve wanted for a long, long time. As soon as the meeting is over, what is the first thing you do? Tell somebody!
You have a problem with your taxes. For weeks you’ve been preparing for that nerve-jangling audit with the IRS. You’ve been fully aware that if things didn’t go your way, you could be in deep trouble. You could lose everything. The audit is a long and grueling affair, but you come out of it on top! The IRS finds in your favor! You won! What’s the first thing you want to do? Tell somebody!
Your child, who has a history of problems with math, comes home with an "A" on his report card in that very subject. What’s the first thing you want to do? Tell somebody!
You have a near miss on the highway, coming very close to having a serious and possibly life-threatening accident. But you come away unscathed. What’s the first thing you want to do? Tell somebody!
You’ve been out of work for months. Finally, you find a job… a good one! What’s the first thing you want to do? Tell somebody!
Now look at your relationship with Jesus. Every day, He gives you victories. Every day, He shows you how to change your life so that it more closely resembles the one He wants you to have. Every day, He reveals to you more and more how His ways are better than yours. Every day, He gives you the opportunity to learn more and more about His ways. Every day, He lets you see the joys that a relationship with Him can bring. What’s the first thing you want to do? Keep your mouth shut. After all, if you start talking about God all the time… if you start attributing every problem you see around you to things spiritual… if you start telling others about how Jesus has changed your life… how He has helped you see that His ways are better… well, everyone will think you’re some kind of Jesus freak! Right?
Think about this… there is a never-ending list of pseudo-religious, “spiritual,” off-the-wall “movements” growing out there. And the proponents of all these totally anti-God organizations or movements or ways of thinking will not hesitate one second to tell you how wonderful this thing they’ve found is, and they will do everything in their power to “convert” you to their way of thinking. Just watch TV for a few evenings… listen to the kinds of thoughts that are being woven into the scripts of virtually every television program … things like reincarnation… New Age mumbo-jumbo… “white” witchcraft… “The Secret” and “A New Earth” (both totally anti-God and promoted to the hilt by Oprah)… and a whole long list of other things that would take up pages here – all are being not only included in television and movie scripts, but lauded as THE way to think! A few nights ago, I actually heard one TV character – in all seriousness – proclaim that “perhaps the norm when we were crawling out of the muck was that we all had BOTH sexes… perhaps being only one gender is a genetic defect.” WHAT???? The point is, not only are these things being discussed in TV fiction and factual programs, but they are being SOLD to an undiscerning public by the bushel! And note… not one proponent of any of these incredibly weird ways of thinking will hesitate one second to not only tell you about what he believes, but do his best to SELL you on what he believes so that you will believe it, too!
If you found the cure for cancer… if you found a bank that gives away money… if you found a sure-fire, guaranteed way of raising a teenager without going crazy… you’d tell somebody, wouldn’t you? Proponents of every anti-God thought imaginable are on a constant campaign to convert everyone they meet to their way of thinking – ways that lead to nothing but destruction. So why are you so hesitant to tell somebody about Jesus - the cure for everything and everyone, and the ONLY way to eternal life? Think about it.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
From the moment David took that rooftop stroll and saw Bathsheba bathing, he started on a downward spiral of sin. He had taken his eyes off the Creator and had focused on His creation instead. He had committed adultery and murder. And through the process, he had become cold toward God and hardened toward his own sin. All David’s life, he had been in a close, warm and intimate relationship with God. But his pattern of compounded sin had driven a wedge between him and the Lord that had widened into a gulf. Then he was confronted by Nathan the prophet with what he had done. Suddenly, he was not only aware of the horrors of his own guilt, but the fact that he was so far from God that he couldn’t feel the joy of fellowship… the joy of salvation… the joy of being loved by God. David needed to have his heart restored to where it once had been.
How is your relationship with the Lord doing? Do you feel close and warm and intimate with Him? Are you filled with the wonder and awe and joy of your salvation? Or do you have trouble praying? Do you find it difficult to relate anything in your life to Jesus? Do things that once filled you with a deep feeling of regret… or of guilt… or of righteous anger… now create no reaction in you at all? When you say the name Jesus, does it leave you cold where it once made your heart leap with joy? When you see the world turning more and more away from God, does it bother you? Or have you started to agree with all those "politically correct" views that seem so humane, so logical, so human? Has sin in your life driven a larger and larger wedge between you and God? Does the gulf between you seem so wide you’ll never get across it?
That’s how David felt when he wrote this Psalm… so very far from God, not only in his actions, but in his heart. The joy was gone. The warmth… the intimacy… the deep feelings of affection… all were gone. But he remembered them. He remembered the closeness he had shared with God all his life… the feelings of joy his many victories in the Lord had given him. He remembered what he had once experienced with God… and he wanted it back.
You can do the same thing. You, like David, can ask God to help you come back to a close relationship with Him. You, like David, can have the joy of your salvation restored. All you have to do is ask. He’s waiting. Why don’t you do it right now…
Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Oh, how precious this prayer is! "Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me."
David had sinned in his heart. He had given in to lust and taken another man’s wife. He had murdered the other man. He had become hardened to his sin, hardened in his heart against his own evil conduct. He knew that the only way he could stay turned away from sin was to have a new heart, a pure desire, a steadfast spirit committed to following God’s laws. He also knew he was incapable of changing himself. He knew he was powerless to become a better person on his own. No self-help program, no group counseling sessions, no psychiatrist or counselor, no amount of personal determination could turn him away from his basic, sinful, fleshly desires. Only God could do it. Only God could change him back to the man he should be. Only God could change David’s "want to’s."
You and I are the same as David. We can spend untold hours and money trying to improve ourselves… trying to change who we are. We can read hundreds of self-help books. We can attend countless self-improvement seminars. We can go through the motions day after day after day of trying to get on the right track all by ourselves. But we are destined for failure unless we add the key ingredient - God’s power to change our "want to’s." Only a pure heart and a steadfast spirit can ensure we will stay on the right track, and only God can create in us that pure heart and that steadfast spirit. On our own, left to our own strength and our own determination, we will fall off the path over and over and over again. But if we open ourselves to God’s cleansing power… God’s changing power… He can and will mold us into the people He wants us to be.
Blessed is the man
who makes the LORD his trust,
who does not look to the proud,
to those who turn aside to false gods.
Have you ever gone back on a promise? No, you say? Really? How about the morning when you promised to make cookies with your daughter after you got home from work? But when the time came, you were just too tired. And what about the woman in your Sunday school class who called you last week asking for prayer about a situation in her life? Did you pray for her every day, like you promised?
Praise God that He is not like we are! He remembers all of His promises. He promised Abraham that his descendants would outnumber the stars… and they do. He promised Joseph that he would be supreme over his people… and he was. He promised the Hebrew people that He would make them a great nation and bring them to a land "flowing with milk and honey"… and He did. He promised the world that He would send a Savior… and He did.
He has promised us that He has a redemptive purpose in each of our lives. He is working daily to accomplish that purpose. He has also promised that when we cry out to Him for help, He will help. He is our deliverance, our only deliverance. Sometimes, all He’s waiting for is for us to ask.
"How blessed is the man who has made the Lord his trust." Psalm 40:4a (NIV)
Sometimes it seems that hardly a week goes by without someone disappointing us or failing us in some way… friends, enemies, criminals, officials, doctors, lawyers, ministers, teachers, family members… name someone, and that person will at some point disappoint you or fail you in some way. People are fallible. We all fail each other at some time or another… it’s just the nature of being human. People turn away in time of crisis. People lie, cheat and steal - even Christians. People get so wrapped up in their own thoughts, their own goals, their own problems, that they barely notice yours, or – at times - even notice you at all!
But God is faithful. He is loyal. He is always there to help us. He will never turn away from us or abandon us. God will always love us, no matter what. There is no other being who can live up to that standard.
In this Psalm, David says that he will never stop telling people about God’s nature, about His faithfulness, His lovingkindness, His loyalty, His love. David was deeply in love with the Lord. And this love motivated him to tell everyone about the Lord, and to continue telling them for the rest of his life.
You have probably had a special person in your life, someone with whom you have been in love, someone you possibly married, or hoped to marry. You wanted to shout her praises from the rooftops. You told everyone you knew how wonderful he was. You couldn’t stop talking about her.
How does your attitude toward our Lord compare? Do you shout His praises to the world? Or do you keep quiet about it lest someone think you’re nuts? You’re not ashamed of being crazy about another person, so why should you be ashamed of being bananas for Jesus?
If you’re not already doing so, isn’t it time you started to tell others about God’s nature, and to tell them with enthusiasm?
Are you truly grateful for what God has done in your life? Can you list the times He has helped you through difficult circumstances? Can you name the changes He has made in you? Do you praise Him for all of your blessings, even when those blessings come in the form of trials?
If you answered all of these questions with an enthusiastic "yes!"… when was the last time you told someone about it? Okay, good! You shared your praises with your Sunday school class last week, and you told one of the girls in your Singles group about them only yesterday. That’s good! Now, how many non-believers did you tell? Several different people, you say? Good!
Now, here’s the trick question. When you described the situations, circumstances and outcome to your non-believing friends, did you tell the story the same way you did when you told your Christian friends? Do the non-believers know that you are giving credit to Jesus for the blessings? Or did you just tell them about the blessings without naming the source?
In this Psalm, David praises God for deliverance from his problems, then presents another problem and asks for deliverance from it, too. He then states that he has told everyone about how God delivered him. He shared his good news with thanksgiving, giving credit to God for being the source of the good news.
The next time you share your good news with someone who is not a believer, be sure that Jesus gets the credit.
Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him;
Do you ever feel like God has placed you “on hold,” and you don’t even have some awful music to listen to? Well, He doesn’t. No matter how silent He seems, God has already answered your prayers. In this instance, He may have said, "Yes." But he has also said, "Wait." So you say, "How long?" And God says, "Until it is my perfect time." And no matter how you plead, cajole, beg, cry, fuss, stamp your foot or holler, God only will do things in His perfect time.
Think about it. Abraham had to wait twenty five years – from when he was 75 until he was 100 years old - before Isaac was finally born. Even though God had told him many years before that his descendants would outnumber the stars, God’s perfect timing came when Abraham was 100.
And then there is Joseph… Joseph had the dream that prophesied his supremacy over his family when he was only 17. Then he was sold into slavery and had to wait thirteen years to see his prophetic dream come to pass and to know what God’s purpose was in it. Just before Moses was born, the new Pharaoh of Egypt began to inflict greater and greater hardships on the Hebrew people, but it was eighty years later before God allowed the Hebrews to be delivered out of the hands of the Egyptians.
God never does anything without a reason. He gave us these examples to teach us how He works His redemptive purpose in our lives, and to show us that His purpose is rarely accomplished over night… and to let us see that feeling sorry for ourselves is a sin. Instead, we are to rejoice in all things, praising God for everything, great or small, good or bad, that occurs in our lives… and wait patiently for His redemptive purpose.
"Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him." Psalm 37:7a NIV