Broken Bones Pt.2
JOHN 1:15-17
15 ¶ John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me. (Notice – He is introducing the lamb of God to the world)
16 And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace. (In other words - Grace and more grace. Grace piled up higher and higher)
17 For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
(The truth of His grace has been revealed, because man has never been able to keep the laws of God. Adam and Eve proved that from the beginning in that they were living in a perfect world where no sin existed, of where everything was perfect, and yet they still couldn’t keep even one single commandment that had been given to them by God)
ROMANS 5:20
20 Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:
(This grace and mercy of God needed a background of darkness to be contrasted against, because how could we ever have appreciated the depth of the grace of God outside of the backdrop of the knowledge of sin and death?)
II SAMUEL 12:5-7
5 And David's anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the LORD liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die: (David had been so shocked by the injustice of what he had been told by the prophet Nathan about this man, not knowing the he himself was the man in the story. And the lamb in the story of what the rich man stole was in reality David’s own sin of taking another man’s wife – and so David’s sin was far worse than the story portrays)
6 And he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity. (Notice – “because he had no pity”. It was himself that he was speaking about – he was the one who had had no pity)
7 And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man.
*We all naturally possess a strong sense of justice of right and wrong.
Even little children don’t have to be taught about when something is not “fair”, because they come born with this sense of justice already fully installed.
But in this portion of scripture, God is illustrating to us by this event in king David’s life, of how easy it is to fall into this trap of judging others of things that we can often be even more guilty of ourselves.
And so God has to deal with this problem of humanity, and this is what the subject of “Broken Bones” is connected to.
Broken Bones Pt.2
Subject:
Then Will I Teach Transgressors Thy Ways
..our theme scripture from last week…
PSALM 51:5-8
This was the psalm that King David wrote after this event of when Nathan the prophet had told him of his sin with Bathsheba.
5 Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.
(The first sin took place in Eden of which was Eve’s adultery with the serpent. Sensual lust was never meant to be connected with God’s intended way of bringing forth life into the earth)
6 Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts (David was judging this man who had stolen the poor man’s lamb, yet he had stolen a poor man’s wife and then went on to murdered the poor man himself. And so we notice how that he could plainly judge the sin of the rich man who had stolen the lamb, but he was blind to the sin of his own heart – and so he needed to have this truth and wisdom placed on the inside of him of what he lacked): and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.
7 ¶ Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.
Albert Einstein quoted –
"There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle".
He saw how that people can view life from these two different views – of one that encourages a perspective of the mundane that is accepted without wonder, and the other that encourages the individual to see the “magic” in what we can perceive as the ordinary things of life, from the vastness of space to the smallest details of nature.
**And so this concept also applies to the pathways of the journey of our lives on earth from the cradle to the grave – it’s from what perspective that we view the events of our lives that makes all the difference.
LETTING.OFF.THE.PRESSURE_ JEFF.IN V-5 N-11 SUNDAY_ 62-0513E
145 … All at once a storm came up. Nothing happens by chance; everything is ordained of God. No matter what happens, all things are going to work together for good.
THINGS.THAT.ARE.TO.BE_ RIALTO.CA V-4 N-6 SUNDAY_ 65-1205
31 You were all pre-planned by God. Nothing happens by chance, with God. He knows all about it. It's all pre-planned, planned for many generations back, so that you could be here tonight. Did you know that?
**If we could only realize that all the things of our many struggles that we encounter along the pathways of the experiences of our lives, they are all designed and allowed by God for the purpose of revealing to us the great character of His loving and saving grace.
PSALM 51:13
13 Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee.
God knew, and had allowed that David would walk down a certain road of life for the purpose of gaining a firsthand experience of the mercies of God, so that he could then teach others about God’s mercies – and this is why many of the Psalms speak to us so deeply, but David had to first have that truth placed on the inside of him before he could teach it to us.
**This is why we spoke of this verse last week “Then will I teach transgressors thy ways” of how that David came to the realize this about his situation.
He realized that in order to be able to teach transgressors the ways of God’s mercies, that God would first have to allow him to feel the pain and the depth of what it was like to be a transgressor himself.
***David had been so quick to pronounce the most server judgement upon a much lesser sin than his own sin (of the rich man that had taken a poor man’s lamb). But David had not just stolen a lamb; he had stolen a man’s wife.
**And so God had allowed this experience of this “fall” to take place along the pathway of David’s life in order to break his bones (metaphorically speaking), because the bones represented the inner most part of the human spirit, and the spirit that was in David was a spirit that was so quick to judge another man sin of which he himself was guilty of the same thing at a far worse level.
*Remember - God never made David do what he did, He just permitted David to do what he did out of the desire of his own carnal nature, and so this is a type of the fall that took place in the garden of Eden that ushered the whole human race into the experience of pain of sin and death and of broken lives and broken bones.
**And so God had a good reason for allowing David to experience the reality of what it was like to be a transgressor.
**In His great wisdom, He had allowed David to fall and to fail, just like He allowed for Adam and Eve to fall in Eden. And then we see that this fall causes David to have his “bones” broken as it were, but then after that, he truly begins to learn about the grace of God, and so that out of the experience of the broken bones, it would be revealed to him by experience the depth of the grace of God, and then after he had learnt that, only then he would be able to teach others of that same grace.
And so this is why we find these teachings of the grace of God written by David all throughout the Psalm’s.
PSALM 103:1-4, 8, 10, 12, 17
1 ¶ A Psalm of David. Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name.
2 Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits:
3 Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases;
4 Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies;
8 The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.
10 He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
12 As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.
17 But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children's children;
Where did David learn all this about God? This rejoicing is coming from out of his “broken bones”.
PSALM 118:1-4 (this Psalm is widely believed to have been written by King David himself)
1 ¶ O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: because his mercy endureth for ever.
2 Let Israel now say, that his mercy endureth for ever.
3 Let the house of Aaron now say, that his mercy endureth for ever.
4 Let them now that fear the LORD say, that his mercy endureth for ever.
*The bones of David’s inner parts (of his quickness to judge others harshly) had been broken, and now these same bones were singing out in truth and rejoicing with a song of how God’s mercies endure forever.
PSALM 136:1
1 ¶ O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.
For the entire 26 verses of this chapter, the same declaration is repeated over and over again in every single verse – “for his mercy endureth forever”.
**And so David in the Psalms is now teaching us of the mercies of God of which his broken bones have come to now rejoice in – and this is the same purpose of how that God is dealing with in our own lives, because He wants to reveal His great love and mercy to each of us individually also.
**And so life is a schoolroom, and God is our great teacher, and He has designed each of our life’s lessons so that before we leave this earth to go to our eternal home, that we will have also come to know His mercy and grace on a personal level, that “His mercies endure forever.”
**And this is the reason why there is so much that is written in the book of Psalms (of the great mercies and grace of God) of which would never have been penned unless David’s had had his “bones” broken.
PSALM 51:13
13 Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee.
**And so God also allows us (as we saw in king David’s case) to have our inner spirits to be broken down with sin or sickness or disappointments, or financial troubles, or whatever else, and to feel the pain of it, but then out of that, there comes a rejoicing and a revelation of the mercies of God.
PSALM 51:8
8 Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.
Last week we read this short extract from a sermon that Charles Spurgeon preached on the 21st of March 1869 of which he reflects on this scripture of Psalms 51:8 - Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.
“You know, brethren, there is a great deal of flash about many of our spiritual joys; they are in the grosser parts very near akin to carnal excitement; and especially with young beginners, the gladness is too apt to trail in the mire of mere mental pleasure. Our gladness is frequently far from being deep as we could wish, but after the bone-breaking everything is solid; after the bone-healing everything is true; what our joy lacks in vividness it makes up in stability and depth. So David means, “the innermost core of my nature, the very essentials of my spiritual being, shall sing and rejoice.”
***In other words – When God reveals His great character to you at the deepest level of your understanding – then you will be anchored deep down by that understanding of the true character of His love and mercy for you, so that when the trials of life come, then that anchor will hold you in the storms.
*The fact is, that you simply cannot know the true depth of joy from the innermost core of your soul without first having had some experience of the depths of the pain of sin and failure and of the broken bones of despair - but then to know the contrast of the loving and tender and healing hand of Jehovah - of the character of God’s great redemptive love.
PSALM 51:1-3
1 ¶ To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
3 For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.
(Another translation of this verse 3 says - I know about my sins, and I cannot forget the burden of my guilt.
And also another translation - For I am aware of my rebellious acts; I am forever conscious of my sin.
*When we confess our sin to God, then we know for sure that He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, because this is His promise to us.
I JOHN 1:9
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
And that He would cast all of our sins in the sea of His forgetfulness, never to be remembered against us anymore.
MICAH 7:19
19 He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.
PSALM 103:10-12
10 He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
11 For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.
12 As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.
JEREMIAH 31:34
34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
*God has not only promised to forgive you, but He has also promised to remember your sins no more.
**Yet the reality of what we all have to contend with as human beings, is that in this life, we don’t have the ability to forget about the mistakes and the sins that we have committed, or the mistakes and the sins of which others have committed against us, and so the problem is that most of us subconsciously carry around with us a level of an ongoing personal feeling of guilt, even though the bible tells us in Romans 8:1 that “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus,”.
And then we can also feel a sense of resentment towards others because of seeing their faults also.
*And then on top of this problem, the longer we live, the more mistakes we will naturally accumulate, and the more offences that others will do against us will accumulate also.
*And so there is this natural ongoing buildup of things that you remember in your mind of which (if not checked) can work like a fold back loop that produces more guilt and resentment. And so how do we deal with this problem according to the scriptures?
The answer lays in confession – If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1st John 1:9
PSALM 51:3
3 For I acknowledge my transgressions (This is the key to keeping our relationship with God continually fresh – by acknowledging our transgressions to God as we walk along the journey of our lives, and this also applies with our relationship with our fellow man.
*This ability to confess sin was what the serpent seed nature that was in Cain lacked.
*God was willing to forgive Cain (the scriptures make that very clear), but there was nothing in Cain’s nature that was able to acknowledge his transgression and to ask for forgiveness of what he had done by murdering his brother Abel – **But when David murdered Uriah, and after God had sent him Nathan the prophet, we find him quick to acknowledge his sin – and that is why that God will always send a prophet with His word before he brings judgement upon a person.