“A Better Covenant” (Hebrews 7:20-28)

 

The other day I was going through some old DVDs in our basement, when I came across one of my favourites: The Princess Bride. I find it difficult to believe that it goes back thirty-five years, so I’ll excuse you if many of you are not familiar with it.

I won’t recount the whole story for you. (I’m not sure I remember it all that well myself!) But there was one character in it called Vizzini who stood out for me. It seemed that in almost every scene where he appeared, he would find a reason to utter the word, “Inconceivable!” In fact it gets to the point where another character ends up saying to him, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Well, I suppose we may all have our favourite words. That certainly seems to have been the case with the author of Hebrews. I mentioned a few weeks ago that one of his favourite words is “better”. In all he uses it eleven times: We have a Saviour who is better than the angels (1:4), we are heirs of a better hope (7:19), we are recipients of better promises (8:6), we desire a better homeland (11:16), we are purified by a better sacrifice (9:23), we will rise again to a better life (11:35) … And in verse 22 of this morning’s passage we find that Jesus is the guarantor of a better covenant.

Which brings us to a second favourite word in Hebrews: “covenant”. It occurs for the first time in verse 22 this morning. And by my count we will come across it a total of nineteen times before we arrive at the conclusion of the final chapter. So if we’re going to understand the message of Hebrews, we need to understand what its author means by the word “covenant”.

So let me ask you: What comes to your mind when you hear the word “covenant”? Personally, I can think of covenant being used in a couple of settings. The first is in the realm of legal contracts, where two parties agree to certain conditions that must be met in order for a deal to be settled. The second is in the realm of marriage, where bride and groom swear to love, honour and cherish each other to the exclusion of all others “till death do us part”.

Perhaps you can think of other examples. But whatever the case, I think we all can agree that a covenant of any kind involves solemnity, permanence and commitment.

The Four Covenants of the Old Testament

Outside of marriage, covenants may not be a regular feature of life today. But they were not uncommon in the world of the ancient Near East. There were covenants between kings, covenants between cities, and covenants between rulers and their subjects. And some of them can be traced back to more than four thousand years ago. However, common though covenants may have been in the ancient world, the Old Testament is the only place where you will find a covenant in which one of the parties is God. So let’s take a few moments to look at some of the covenants we find there.

The first time the word “covenant” appears in the Bible is in the account of Noah. No doubt you are familiar with the scene, as after what seemed an endless time in the ark, Noah at last stood on dry ground once again. As he gazed into the sky, there was a rainbow and God spoke to him: “I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature … that never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” (Genesis 9:9-11)

Turn another half dozen or so chapters through Genesis and you will come to a second covenant, this time with Abraham. God promises that his descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in the sky. Added to that, they will no longer be wanderers but will be possessors of a land that they can call their own. Unlike the covenant with Noah, however, this time there was an obligation on the part of Abraham and his descendants: that every male should be circumcised as a sign of the covenant.

We come to a third covenant when we turn to the book of Exodus and stand with the people of Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai. There the Lord lays down the conditions that his newly rescued people are to uphold if they are to remain in relationship with him. We think of them as the Ten Commandments. But rabbis would tell you that there were in fact no fewer than 613!

The fourth covenant comes two centuries later, when the nation of Israel was entering its golden age under King David. God’s promise to David is summarized for us in Psalm 89: “I have made a covenant with my chosen one; I have sworn to David my servant: I will establish your offspring for ever, and build your throne for all generations.”

Now these are all amazing promises. The people of Israel stood in immense privilege. No other nation was so favoured. But the problem was that they never upheld their side of the covenant. They failed to recognize that circumcision did not involve just a surgical procedure, but that that outward act was intended as a sign of an inward commitment to serve the Lord God and him alone. Instead, they found themselves being attracted to the false deities and pagan practices of the nations that surrounded them. They bowed before images made of wood and precious metals and some even sacrificed their children to them. Their priests and their leaders from the king down became corrupt and the people were not far behind in following them. The poor were trodden under foot and widows were forced to beg to keep themselves and their children alive.

The Promise of a New Covenant

It was into the midst of this ongoing scene that God sent his prophets. Their task was to warn the people, including the king and the royal family, the priests and all the religious officials, of their rampant corruption and infidelity.

But the prophets came not just to alert the people to their waywardness. They also brought a message of hope and redemption, of forgiveness and restoration, of new life and a whole new relationship with God. Among those prophets was Jeremiah, who came with these words:

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their ancestors on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband,” declares the Lord. “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbour and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31:31-34)

It was a remarkable promise—and we don’t have the time to go into it in any great detail right now. Suffice it to say, though, that this new covenant would not be a matter of outward obedience to laws and regulations. Rather, it would be centred in a relationship—knowing God, not as a distant being out there, but as a living presence, God himself coming to dwell within us. And we know that those promises were fulfilled in a person—in Jesus.

I love the way the apostle Paul put it when he wrote to the believers in Corinth: “All the promises of God find their ‘Yes’ in Jesus.” (2 Corinthians 1:20) Jesus has come to usher in a better covenant than the covenant with Noah or Abraham or Moses or David—a covenant that is sealed not with the sacrifice of bulls and sheep and goats, but with his own life’s blood; a covenant that involves not an outward obedience but his daily presence in our lives through the Holy Spirit. All of that is wrapped up in the words from Hebrews we have heard this morning, where we read that Jesus , “the Son who has been made perfect forever”, “is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him”.

Four Promises of Jesus

So it is that “Jesus is the guarantor of a better covenant”—a covenant that was sealed by his blood shed for you and for me on the cross and ratified by his resurrection from the grave on the third day. But what does that mean in practical terms? How does it work out for you and me today? Part of the answer at least can be found in four promises that Jesus makes in the gospels.

The first is found in John’s gospel, where Jesus says, “Whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” (John 6:37) So we have the assurance that when we put our faith in Jesus, he will never let go of us. We may fail him. Indeed we most certainly will. I know I have time and time again. But he will never turn his back on us. Peter found that out after he denied knowing Jesus not once but three times. It was not many days later that Jesus was coming to him once again and saying to him, “Follow me.” (John 21:19)

A second promise of Jesus comes to us from the week before his crucifixion, when he assured his followers, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” (Matthew 24:35)

Yesterday was the anniversary of my ordination. Back then there were theologians who were claiming that God was dead. Now those theologians are the ones who are dead—and the good news of Jesus continues to be proclaimed with power and to prove itself true in people’s lives all over the world.

The church in Nigeria grows by more than a million new disciples a year. At last count the largest church in Europe was where? In Kyiv, with more than thirty thousand adherents.[1] And where are the world’s largest Christian congregations? Not in North America, but in Korea and India.

A third promise that Jesus made to his followers came as they gathered for the Passover supper on the evening before his crucifixion. It was on that occasion that he told them, “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” (John 14:1-3) And so Jesus gives us the assurance that not only will he be with us in every circumstance of life, but that when life ends, we will be gathering among that joyful throng to sing his everlasting praise:

To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be blessing and honour and glory and might for ever and ever! (Revelation 5:13)

And the fourth promise that Jesus has left with us comes in his very last words before he ascended to be with his Father: “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)

John Baillie was a Scottish theologian of the early twentieth century. He was fond of telling the story of going for a walk one day with his young grandson, who was just a toddler. At one point along their way the little boy began to stumble. He might have fallen down altogether, had his little hand not been held in the firm grasp of his grandfather’s. And that, said Baillie, is how it is with Jesus. We may stumble and fall, but Jesus is with us and he will never let us go.

With all that in mind, maybe you can see now why covenant is one of the favourite words of the author of Hebrews. May it be one of your favourite words too. And by the power of the Holy Spirit may you seek to live out that covenant in your daily walk with the one who sealed it with his blood.

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[1]     Philip Jenkins, God’s Continent, 88

“The God who knows us” (Psalm 139)

It was my original intention this morning for us to look together at the Old Testament passage we read a few moments ago: the story of Samuel’s first encounter with God. The narrator opens the account with an observation that has to be one of the saddest statements in all of the Bible: “In those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions” (1 Samuel 3:1). Generations had elapsed since the time of Moses and the great events of the exodus. The voice that had thundered from the peak of Mount Sinai was scarcely a faint echo from the past. The worship of the tabernacle had degenerated into a hollow ritual. And the great moral principles that had made them unique among the nations had largely slipped from the people’s collective consciousness.

From this sad overview of the spiritual state of the nation of Israel the camera focuses in on a young lad fast asleep in the large tent structure that served as the centre of Israel’s worship. And in the stark silence of the night we hear a voice: “Samuel!” The young lad stirs, sits up, rubs his eyes and answers, “Here I am.” He gets up and runs to his master, the aged priest Eli. “You called me?” he asks. But the old man replies, “It wasn’t me; go back to bed.”

A second time it happens. “Samuel…” A second time he gets up and goes to the old man. And a second time he is sent back to his bed. He has barely fallen asleep when it happens again: “Samuel!” But this time the old priest has begun to figure out what’s going on. It’s all rather like what we read in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where Narnia has been trapped in winter almost since anyone can remember, as suddenly the snow starts to melt, buds appear on the trees, and spring flowers begin to sprout and blossom. “Aslan is on the move!” So old Eli instructs the lad, “Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” Back to his bed the young Samuel goes—and sure enough the Lord comes to him again, “Samuel! Samuel…”

You know me

And this brings me to Psalm 139, which begins with the words, “Lord, you have searched me, and you know me…” I suppose it shouldn’t surprise us that God knows us. After all, he is the creator of the universe! Several weeks ago Karen and I watched the film Citizenfour. It centres on the story of Edward Snowden and how government agencies in our western nations are increasingly able to snoop on seemingly every detail of our lives. 1984 is long in the past, but it appears that George Orwell’s catchphrase, “Big Brother is watching you,” has become a reality—and for many of us, who value our privacy and our freedom, it can be a frightening one.

So what does the psalm mean when it says, “Lord, you have searched me, and you know me”? Well of course it includes the idea that God knows all about us. He knows what’s in our emails and our bank accounts. He knew our DNA long before Francis Collins and others were able to map the human genome. Furthermore, the psalm tells us he knows what’s going on inside our hearts and minds—and that can be a scary thought! But all of that is not the point. For the Hebrew verb “to know” is not just about knowing facts. It is about knowing someone personally, having a relationship with them.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,” the Lord says tenderly to Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:5). When Jesus speaks to his followers about his being the good shepherd, he tells them, “I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father” (John 10:14-15). So what we are talking about here is a personal knowing, an intimate knowing. To my mind we see it most poignantly in that scene outside the empty tomb on the first Easter morning. Mary Magdalene has come with her pounds of spices to anoint the body of Jesus. But the stone has been rolled away and the body has gone. Through her tears and the morning mist she sees a figure whom she mistakes as the gardener. “Tell me, sir,” she says to him, “where you have put him.” Then she hears the word that changes her life forever: “Mary…” (John 20:11-16)

“Mary…” “Adam…” “Emily…” “Alvin…” “Kewoba…” “Lolita…” “Gil…” “Brian…” “Samuel…” The Lord does not look on us only as a collectivity. He knows each of us by name. He knows our highs and our lows, our joys and our sorrows, our strengths and our weaknesses, our dreams and our secret fears—not to use them against us, but to come alongside us and to strengthen us along the journey of becoming the women and the men that he has created every one of us uniquely to be. And with that I have already arrived at my second point.

You hold me fast

That personal, intimate knowing of our hearts on God’s part inevitably leads to something more. So it is that we read in verses 9 and 10,

If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
     if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
     your right hand will hold me fast.

When we read these words we need to remember that ancient near-eastern cultures gave particular significance to the right hand as opposed to the left. The right hand is the strong hand. The right hand is the useful hand. The right hand is the hand of blessing. It is for this reason that through Isaiah God promises the people of Israel, “Do not fear, for I am with you… I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10). By the same token, when Jesus spoke about being struck on the right cheek, what he was referring to was a slap from the left hand, and that was a grievous affront. It was quite literally to add insult to injury. And so when we are failing or falling, it is with his right hand, the hand of strength, the hand of blessing, that God graciously reaches out to us and lifts us up and puts us in the place where we should be.

The apostle Paul expressed it memorably those magnificent verses in the eighth chapter of Romans when he wrote,

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35, 37-39)

The late Scottish theologian T.F. Torrance hit the nail on the head in an illustration that I have found myself going back to again and again. He wrote,

Many years ago I recall thinking of the marvellous way in which our faith is implicated in the faith of Jesus Christ and grasped by his faithfulness, when I was teaching my little daughter to walk. I can still feel her tiny fingers gripping my hand as tightly as she could. She did not rely upon her feeble grasp of my hand but upon my strong grasp of her hand which enfolded her grasp of mine within it. That is surely how God’s faithfulness actualized in Jesus Christ has hold of our weak and faltering faith and holds it securely in his hand.[1]

Torrance’s fellow countryman, the hymn writer George Matheson, put it lyrically in the successive verses of his hymn of 130 years ago: “O love that wilt not let me go… O light that followest all my way… O joy that seekest me through pain…”

As we read in the psalm, there is nowhere we can go, whether to the heights of ecstasy or to the depths of despair, or to the farthest place imaginable, that our gracious God is not able to reach out his hand to us and take us firmly into his grasp—and as we look at that hand we see on it the mark of a nail and the stain of his blood.

You lead me

All of these observations take us in the end, and as they should, to a prayer:

Search me, God, and know my heart;
     test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
     and lead me in the way everlasting.

If there is nothing else that we can learn from the verses of this psalm it is that we have a God whom we can trust to lead us through life, and trust to the uttermost.

Yet we would be horribly mistaken if we thought for one minute that following him turns our lives into a cakewalk. That is the false message being promulgated by the purveyors of the so-called “health, wealth and prosperity gospel”. The true gospel—and our faith—centres in the one who proclaimed, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me,” (Luke 9:23) and who warned those same followers, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33). A couple of generations later one of those followers would reiterate the same warning: “Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you” (1 John 3:13).

The Letter to the Hebrews dedicates an entire chapter to the stories of those who chose to follow God’s leading. It tells of some

who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawn in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated… They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground. These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect. (Hebrews 11:35-40)

Torture, floggings, stoning and imprisonment! All of this seems like a rather discouraging note on which to end a sermon. And it would be, were it not for two things: the companion and the destination. We have a God who promises, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). Do you remember the story of Daniel’s three companions whom King Nebuchadnezzar commanded to be thrown into a blazing furnace for their refusal to bow to a graven image? When the king looked into the furnace, he saw not three men but four. They trusted in God’s promise,

Do not fear, for I am with you;
     do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
     I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. (Isaiah 41:10)

And were not Jesus’ final words to his followers before he departed this world, “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20)?

When we come to the end of that journey (where the Lord has been with us at each step along the way) it will be to arrive at a destination to which nothing that we have ever experienced in this world can compare. It will be to set foot in the new Jerusalem, the very dwelling place of God, where God himself will be with us and we will know his unmediated presence, where he will wipe every tear from our eyes; where there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things will have passed away and everything will have been made new (Revelation 21:3-4). And our only possible response will be,

“Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory!” (Revelation 19:6-7)

Amen.

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[1]     The Mediation of Christ, page 83

“The Other Side of Repentance” (Psalm 51)

In this morning’s New Testament reading we heard the story of what may be one of Jesus’ best-known miracles. Mark gives us the picture of Jesus in a house with people crowding around him on every side, jam-packed right to the door. As Jesus is teaching, noises are heard from above, then dust and little bits and pieces start falling from the ceiling, a shaft of light opens up, and last but not least, slowly a man is lowered on a mat into the middle of the room. I can only imagine that everyone was wondering what was going to happen next. But I bet no one could have predicted that Jesus would do what he did, as he turned to the man and said to him, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

Then the reaction began to set in. Not a word was uttered. It didn’t need to be. The atmosphere of shocked condemnation could be felt throughout the room as much as the dust still hanging in the air. “Why does this fellow talk like that?” “He’s blaspheming!” “Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

So what did it mean for Jesus to forgive that paralyzed man? What was he doing that seemed so radical, even heretical, to some of those in the room that day? To look for an answer, I want us to turn to the Old Testament passage we also read a few minutes ago, Psalm 51.

It is recognized as the greatest expression of penitence in all of Scripture. One Bible Commentary goes so far as to say, “As an expression of a heart overwhelmed by shame, humbled and broken by guiltiness, and yet saved from despair through penitential faith in the mercy of God, this poem is unsurpassed.”[1] No doubt that is why it forms the core of the Ash Wednesday service in many churches, including our own.

Of the 150 psalms in the Old Testament, half are attributed to King David. But of those seventy-five, only three contain a precise reference to the circumstances that gave rise to them. And curiously each of these arises out of a low point in David’s life. Two of them were composed during the uprising fomented by his rebellious son Absalom, when David was forced to flee for his life into the wilderness. The psalm we are looking at this morning, however, is the expression of what was undoubtedly the lowest point in David’s life—and unlike the others, it was a low point entirely of his own making.

Many of us will be familiar with the story of David’s infatuation with Bathsheba, the wife of his most loyal general, Uriah the Hittite; of how that infatuation led to adultery; of Bathsheba’s resulting pregnancy; and finally of how David cunningly engineered Uriah’s death in the field of battle. Had it not been for the courage of one man, the prophet Nathan, David’s treachery might never have been found out. Now we find David with his face to the ground, crying out through his tears, “Have mercy on me, O God…”

The psalm is a study in repentance. But that repentance would have been meaningless, were it not for a far greater fact—the fact of God’s forgiveness. The conviction that our God is a God who forgives is one that runs from one end of the Bible to the other. Way back on Mount Sinai God had revealed himself to Moses as “the Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin” (Exodus 34:6-7a). Centuries later this same truth is echoed in Nehemiah’s prayer on behalf of his wayward people: “But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love” (Nehemiah 9:17). And elsewhere in the Psalms we read, “But with you there is forgiveness…” (Psalm 130:4a).

But what does it mean for God to forgive? That is what this morning’s psalm is all about. And it comes to us in a series of verb clusters. If you have a Bible open in front of you, we’ll take a look at each of them in turn.

Wipe, wash, cleanse

You can find the first cluster in verses 1, 2, 7 and 9. It involves words that all have to do with “wiping out”, “washing away” or “cleansing”. The first of them, which our New International Version Bibles translates “blot out”, has to do with making a correction in a book, whether it was removing a stain or cancelling a debt. I am told that in the ancient world the way you erased something on a leather scroll was not by blotting, but by washing or sponging off the ink. So perhaps “wipe out” is a better translation than “blot out”—especially when you consider that the word is used elsewhere for wiping a dish clean.[2]

Later, in the writings of the prophet Isaiah we read of the Lord,

“I, even I, am he who wipes out
     your transgressions, for my own sake,
     and remembers your sins no more.” (Isaiah 43:25)

So it is, when God wipes out our sins, not a trace of them is left—and this is made clear in the two other words that David uses in his prayer: in verses 2 and 7: “wash away” and “cleanse”.

When I was a boy there was a detergent called Omo. I haven’t checked the grocery store to see if it’s still on the market and I don’t think we ever used it in our household. But what I remember about it is the ads: “Omo washes not only clean, not only white, but bright! Omo adds bright, bright, brightness.”

Now in the ancient world there was no such thing as Omo. For clothes to be washed they had to be beaten on rocks. When I visited Haiti a few years ago I remember mothers doing this in a stream that ran by a school sponsored by our church—and I’ve never seen school children in such sparkling white clothes as I did there. So to quote one author the washing we’re talking about here is “not a polite rinse but a thorough scrub”.[3] And when it comes to the stain of sin, even that is not enough. As we read from the prophet Jeremiah,

“Although you wash yourself with soap
     and use an abundance of cleansing powder,
     the stain of your guilt is still before me,”
declares the Sovereign Lord. (Jeremiah 2:22)

Yet though we may not have the power to cleanse ourselves from our sins, we have a God who does. The Bible assures us,

If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
(1 John 1:9)

Though your sins are like scarlet,
     they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
     they shall be like wool. (Isaiah 1:18)

Hide your face

The next expression that David uses—and you’ll find it in verse 9—is a curious one: “Hide your face from my sins.” What does it mean for God to hide his face from my sins? Way back at the beginning of creation Adam and Eve tried to hide from God after they had sinned, and it didn’t work.

Last week our older son celebrated a significant birthday, and Karen and I presented him with an album of pictures we had taken of him over the years. Needless to say, we were careful to omit any that might be embarrassing or less than complimentary! One of the things I have said about myself more than once is that I have no desire to have to sit through the complete video of my life. There are just too many things that I have done, words that I have spoken, not to mention attitudes that I have harboured, of which I am ashamed.

So was David asking God to play pretend? I don’t believe so. In spite of the level of moral degradation to which his sin had plummeted him, David nevertheless still had a profound appreciation of the wonder of God’s forgiveness. That is, when God forgives our sins, he forgives them utterly. As we read from the prophet Micah, “You will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19). Corrie ten Boom shed vivid light on this truth in an experience she had following the Second World War. Perhaps some of you have heard it before, but I’ll repeat it again because it is so memorable.

The year was 1947, and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives. This was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed‐out land, and I gave them my favourite mental picture. Maybe because the sea is never far from a Hollander’s mind, I liked to think that that’s where forgiven sins were thrown. “When we confess our sins,” I said, “God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever. And even though I cannot find a scripture for it, I believe God then places a sign out there that says, NO FISHING ALLOWED.”[4]

“No fishing allowed.” When God forgives our sins, he forgives them fully, finally and forever.

Restore, rescue

We come now to our third set of words, the first of which is “restore”. If you check a concordance, you will find that the verb for “restore” is found more than a thousand times in the Old Testament. At its heart it means simply “turn around” or “return”. And so more often than not it is speaking about our human part in the process of repentance. Back in the dark ages when I was a teenager, our morning service at church would often begin with these words:

Seek ye the Lord while he may be found,
     call ye upon him while he is near:
Let the wicked forsake his way,
     and the unrighteous man his thoughts:
and let him return unto the Lord,
              and he will have mercy upon him;
     and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
(Isaiah 55:6-7)

Now you can see that these verses emphasize what is required of us in dealing with the sin in our lives. But when David uses this word it is the other way around. In verse 14, he uses exactly the same word when he calls upon God to “restore to me the joy of your salvation”. Why? Because David recognizes that without God’s sovereign intervention true restoration is not possible. The author of Psalm 126 had the same thought in mind when he sang, “Restore our fortunes, Lord, like streams in the desert” (Psalm 126:3).

Linked with that is another word David uses, this time in verse 14: “deliver”. I prefer to translate it, “rescue”, since when most people think about “deliver” these days, what they generally have in mind is a package from Amazon arriving at their door. At its root the word has the basic sense of pulling something out. As David cries out elsewhere,

I sink in the miry depths,
     where there is no foothold …
Rescue me from the mire,
     do not let me sink… (Psalm 69:2,14)

So it is that God finds us up to our necks in a substance that I won’t mention from the pulpit, and he reaches down and lifts us up and cleans us off and sets us on our feet again: another picture of forgiveness.

Now shift back to the little house in Capernaum and to Jesus’ words, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” In those five short words are concentrated all that I have been at pains to say for the last fifteen minutes. “Your sins have been wiped out.” “You are washed, cleaner than any human effort could make you.” “Your sins have been hidden in a place where even God himself chooses not to find them.” “You have been rescued, lifted out of a pit from which you could never have escaped on your own.”

Lent is a season of repentance. And today you and I have the freedom to repent because we have a God who forgives—and because we have a Saviour who cried, “Father, forgive them…” And those words were meant not only for those who stood beneath his cross, but for you and me today.

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[1]     Leslie S. M‘Caw & J.A. Motyer, “Psalms”, The New Bible Commentary Revised, 1970, page 483

[2]     See 2 Kings 21:13

[3]     John Goldingay, Songs From a Strange Land, page 162

[4]    “The Face of My Enemy”, https://www.biblegateway.com/devotionals/night-light-couples/2016/04/22