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God's Greatest
Creation
A sermon by Dr. James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, July 2, 2006
Part of a series
from favorite Psalms, “Lift Up Your Eyes!”
Psalm 51
If I were to ask you what you
most appreciate about God, what words would you use to describe that
appreciation? Love? Forgiveness? Pardon? That God is Savior? That God is
shepherd? That God is great physician? What word would you use? What words
might you use? There would be no wrong answers, I think.
I wonder, amidst all of those
“right on target” words you might want to use the word, “Well, you know, I
really do appreciate what God has created.” And that’s probably the way we’d put
it. When we think of God as creator, we think of the time when God walked on the
brow of nothingness and lofted the planets into their space. And he took the
galaxies and put them in their spatial balconies. And, along came our world, and
the fish, and the animals, and the birds, and Adam and Eve. But, do you realize
that God as creator is creating? Creation is not something God does. Creation is
something God is.
I want you to turn in your
Bible to the very last of it: Twenty-first chapter of Revelation. We know that
the beginning of the Bible begins with creation, “God created the heavens and
the earth . . .,” but did you know that the Bible ends with creation? Look at
the first of chapter 21 Revelation: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for
the first earth had passed away . . .” Look at verse 5: “He who was seated on
the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’” God never quits creating. What
you and I tend to do is we put God as creator in nature—and that’s fine. What’s
your favorite part of God’s creation in nature? Mountains? Woodlands? Seashore?
Fishing? What would be yours? Garden? You remember the lines, you will find them
in some gardens on a placard:
The kiss of the sun for
pardon,
The smell of the earth for mirth,
One is closer to God in a garden
Than any other place on earth.
Now, I’m a gardener, but I
would have to disagree with that, because I think God is closest when he’s in
the garden of our souls. And the greatest part of all creation is not what God
can create physically. It isn’t what God can create out there. It’s what God can
create in here.
Turn to Psalm 51:10. Look at
what it says, “Create . . .” Oh, there’s that word create. “Create in me
a pure heart, O God and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” Look at verse 8:
“Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.” And look
at the first verse: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love;
and according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.” This is
David’s Psalm.
Two names are linked with
David, even for those who know nothing about the Bible. The first one is Goliath
and the second one is Bathsheba—and how different they were. Goliath was tall,
ugly. He was also very proud, boastful. Bathsheba was small and beautiful and
sensitive. Goliath David killed. Bathsheba David used.
The story that brings David
and Bathsheba together is found in 2 Samuel 11 and 12, and I won’t take the time
to ask you to turn to it, but let me tell you the story. Some of you have never
heard it. Some of you’ve heard it many times. It is spring or early summer and
David’s army has gone. As is the custom of that day, they went out to raid
surrounding tribes and villages to come back with loot and riches, but David has
stayed home. Did you hear that—David has stayed home? Is he tired? He is getting
older, but he is established as king. Maybe he is just bored. I don’t know, but
on a day he looks out from his lofty height and there in a garden place is a
very beautiful person taking a bath and he sends out to find who that is. And in
the subsequent hours and days, David sends for her, does what he wants to do
with her and then discards her. This is not a David we are prepared for. David,
slayer of Goliath, the mean guy. David, shepherd of Israel. David, sweet singer
of the songs of Zion. David? David, what are you doing?
What David is doing is what
all of us do when we sin. He is making himself god. He is controlling events and
he is making sure he is in charge of all of his life. It can be echoed in the
word sinned. If you read the story, it is full of David sent.
David sent for Bathsheba. David sent the message to Joab that
Bathsheba’s husband needed to be put on the front line and the next day he was
killed. It’s all about the king. It’s all about David. It’s all about what the
king wants. I have just defined sin for all of us. Virtually all sin is rooted,
is rooted, is rooted in wanting to be our own god. To call our own commands. To
make what we want negotiable. It is taking charge of our lives and controlling
the lives of others. Since there’s just a limited number of ways to do this,
virtually everybody in this room can identify with this story.
And then Nathan arrives.
Nathan was David’s Billy Graham. Now there was no pulpit in the room where they
talked and David wasn’t sitting in a pew. Nathan just came in and then he told
David a story. It was about a very rich man who lived up on a hill in a very
rich home. He now only had a flock of sheep, he had flocks of sheep. Guests
came. He decided to prepare a banquet. Now in order to provide the meat for the
banquet, he could’ve gone to one of his many flocks, but instead he chose to go
down and capture and kill the pet lamb of a poor man who lived at the foot of
the hill. And David was caught up in the story. Furious. Absolutely overcome by
the injustice of it all. And when his anger had died down and his sentimental
kind of justice had waned, Nathan looked at him and said, “You are the man!” [2
Samuel 12:17]
The gospel begins with
everyone in this room, with, “You are the man.” “You are the woman.” The
Pharisees avoided this by always making it them. They were the sinners.
They were the ones at fault. Nathan will not have it. The gospel will not
have it. The reason Jesus came into such conflict with the Pharisees is because
he kept saying in his own way, in a thousand ways, you are the one.
You are the one. You see, the gospel always begins with us. It’s my heart
and your heart. It’s got my name on it and your name on it. It isn’t them.
And David, just like the Pharisees, could be very righteous when it dealt with
somebody else’s sins, but when it came to his own he was blind. And that’s the
first step—recognition—to recognize our problem, to recognize where we
are. It isn’t where he or she is. We have an uncanny way of putting ourselves on
the sidelines when we start talking about matters like these.
And then came the day. David
heard it, “You are the man.” I don’t know how long it was after Nathan left that
David—poet, singer, and one with insight—understood he was wrong, and
pulled out the pen and began to journal; and, part of what the journaling
produced is Psalm 51. It has been such a great confession for Christians and
believers of all ages, whether you turn to the prophets of the Old Testament or
the Lord Jesus or the apostles or the great Christians that we know from
history, like Augustine or Luther or Calvin or Billy Graham. You are talking
about a confession that communicates to us. We understand from it that there are
times that we can only call upon the mercy of God. Verse 10 says, “Create in me
a pure heart.” That’s the greatest of all creation. When God moves in and
takes over and rebuilds and remakes and rebirths and cleanses and scrubs and
leaves us like we were meant to be instead of {what we are made} what we have
made of ourselves. It is God’s creative ability to take a wandering heart and
bring it home. Ability to take an empty heart and fill it full. To take a
grief-stricken heart and give it a song. To take a soiled heart and make it
clean. And to take a sinful heart and forgive it.
What about you? What about
me? What about everybody that God ever created. Romans 3:23 says that we can’t
avoid sin—that all sinned and come short of the glory of God. And because
of that, there are times when we just really need God’s creative help in making
us scrubbed and clean and renewed and a spirit right within us.
Listen as I read Peterson’s
translation of this passage:
Generous in
love--God, give [me] grace!
Huge in mercy—wipe
out my bad record.
Scrub away my
guilt; soak out my sins in your laundry.
I know how bad I’ve
been. My sins are staring me down . . .
Soak me in your
laundry and I’ll come out clean, scrub me and I’ll have a snow-white life.
Tune me in to foot-tapping songs, and set those once broken bones to
dancing . . .
God, make a fresh start in me; shape—this is a wonderful phrase, wish I’d
thought of it—shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.
Don’t throw me out with the trash.
The translation from Peterson
of Psalm 51.
What about you? What about
all of us? First there is the recognition and then there is the confession, but
then there is that moment of invitation where we with tears in our eyes and a
sob in our throat say to God, “Create in me a new start. Create in me a fresh
heart. Create in me a weed-free garden of my soul. And maybe, just maybe way
back at the beginning of time, God knew that there were gonna be people like you
and me who would need a constant reminder that the Lord Jesus did something for
us we cannot do for ourselves. He can create in us a clean heart and renew a
right spirit within us.
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