“An Inside Job”

Psalm 51:1-12

August 3, 2003

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John Fleming

I would like to start this morning with a couple of lines (actually there are four of them) that ought to make a lot of sense to you. Here are the four. Let’s see what you think. Spray paint won’t fix rust. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Let’s try another one. A band-aid won’t remove a tumor. So far so good, let’s try the third of them. Wax on the hood of the car won’t cure the cough of the engine. Let me give you the fourth truth that ought to pull the other three of these together and will get our sermon off to a pretty good start. If the problem is on the inside, then you have to go on the inside to deal with it.

That is what a preacher I heard about learned the hard way. Let me set the scene up for you. This preacher and author had just finished up a two week vacation. He was well rested and his energy level was as high as the stack of things he was sure was on his desk, so he rolled out of bed early. It was so early, in fact, that his wife tried to convince him to sleep at least another hour. With sleep in her voice, she said, “It’s the middle of the night!” But still he showered, shaved, and drove to the church. The preacher admitted that the empty streets did scare him a bit. And as he drove, he did remember the break in that happened just a few blocks from his church. So he decided that he would be careful. He chose to park as close to the church as he could and as he entered the doors closest to his office and the church office, he punched in his code on his church’s new security system, and the blinking red light suddenly became green. Maybe you can see where this story is heading. I told you that he was trying to be careful and so he locked the door behind him and punched in his code again to arm the alarm. Now he was sure that if anyone tried to break into the church, he would be one of the first ones to know about it. He could not help but to pat himself on the back and to think that he was brilliant. Then he walked down the hall, opened the office door and then the door to his own office. He could not have been at his desk for more than a minute when the sirens started to scream. Fear moved through him as the thought ran through his mind, “Someone’s trying to break into our church!” His first thought was to hide under his desk, but he decided that since their church was in a neighborhood, maybe he should go down and turn off the alarm. So he did that and then ran back to his office and dialed 9-1-1 in hopes that the police would soon be on their way. He hung up the phone, was sitting at his desk, when this thought crossed his mind, “What if the thieves try to get back in before the police arrive?” So this preacher dashed back down the hall, punched in his five digit code and

he proclaimed, “They won’t get me! I’m too smart for them!” He turned back to the office and was almost at his alarm when the alarm started blaring again. Again the preacher ran down the hallway, to the outside doors, and punched in his code that disarmed the alarm. He could just picture it. Out there hiding in the landscaping, perhaps in the bushes were a couple of frustrated burglars who jumped back to their hiding place every time they set off the alarm.

Because his nerves were shot and because he was now afraid, he punched in his code, setting the alarm now for the third time. This time, instead of going back to his office, he looked out the window hoping to see the blue lights of his city’s police cars as they pulled into the parking lot. His face was pressed against the window when the alarm went off for a third time. He disarmed it again and paused. He thought, “Wait a minute, surely burglars are not this persistent! I bet something is wrong with our alarm!” So he disarmed the alarm for the fourth time in thirty minutes, sprinted back to his office, reached for the alarm company’s phone number and complained, “I think that something is wrong with our alarm. It keeps going off! We’ve either got some determined thieves, or the thing’s not working!” By now the preacher was a little agitated and he drummed his fingers on his desk while he waited for the young lady to pull up the church’s account. Any vacation energy that he had was now long gone. I wish that you could have been there to hear the words that she said. “Sir, maybe it’s not the alarm’s fault or persistent criminals” He barked back, “Then what could it be?” There was a pregnant pause right before said these words, “Did you know, preacher, that your church is equipped with motion detectors?”

It was about that time that the preacher noticed the lights reflecting off the windows of the church. The preacher ran to the door and opened it. One of the officers asked, “Are you the preacher here?” When he confessed that he was, the next line out of his mouth was this one, “Uh, I think that the problem is on the inside.” Both of them smiled and were nice enough not to ask for any details of what had happened. Though he was sure that he heard them mumble to themselves about the sort of things that they don’t teach preachers in theology school. When the policemen had gone, the preacher sat back down at his desk, and admitted the obvious lesson, “You cannot fix an inside problem by going outside.” He confessed that he had hid from thieves that were not there, faulting a system that had not failed and called for help that he did not need. He said, “I thought that the problem was out there, when really, it was inside.”

Church, you know about inside problems, don’t you? Would you mind a little meddling this morning? The sirens and the warnings might not blare in church halls, but they blare, perhaps with problems and pain. A fit of anger might be a sign that something’s going on in our souls. A feeling of guilt sometimes gets the best of you. Do either of those sound familiar to you? The question becomes, what do you do when the alarms are howling? Have you ever blamed someone else for things such as these? Blaming others, well, that reminds me of the story of the golfer who was about to hit a drive off the first tee. He lined it up and swung dramatically, but he missed the ball completely. He lined up the shot again, this time he swung gracefully, but still he missed the ball completely. Then he tried a third time, and again he missed. He looked around at the three who were playing with him and he exclaimed, “This is a tough course!” And it might have been. It is easier, friends, to blame others than to look inside at yourselves.

In our scripture lesson for this morning, taken from the words of the fifty-first Psalm, this prayer of David, the once shepherd boy and now king knows that he cannot blame others for what has happened and that coming clean with God is the only thing that will make his relationship with Him right again. Now we know this David, don’t we? He is the one who felled Goliath, found favor with God and became the king. He was the one only two short weeks ago in our scripture lesson who had obeyed God at every turn, listened to God’s prophet, Nathan, and did everything that God told him to do. He was the one who was successful and popular and sitting in his own cedar house and wanting to build God a house, too. But that was before what happened, happened!

Read my words in the preparation for worship part of your bulletin and you will know that I did not muster up the courage to preach the story of what David did that drove him to his knees and this prayer. His is a soap opera kind of a story. When he should have been off at war, he stayed home, noticed Bathsheba bathing, inquired about her and before long he heard those three magical words, “I am pregnant.” Though they were not magical to him. Instead of dealing with what he had done, he tried to cover it up. This cover up of his becomes his confession. Listen to his prayer, “Have mercy on me... For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me.”

To his credit, David does not tell God that what happened was someone else’s fault. He claims the blame. Which, you might say, is the first step in dealing with sin. David knows that there is only one way to salvage his life and that is to go to God. You might even say that he throws himself on God’s mercy, knowing, really that he doesn’t deserve mercy at all. He knows, as hard as this is to admit, that whatever judgment God passes on, is justified and deserved.

If you will look at the fifth verse of this lesson, you will see David admit what all of us have discovered, “Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me. Paul talks about this same sort of thing in his letter to the church at Rome when he writes, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Friends, this is a powerful Psalm. David’s words are important words. He says that God desires, “...truth in the inward being....that is, inside our souls.” Do you understand this, what God wants more than anything else is a complete confession. What David wants more than anything else is to be clean. Do you see how the two of these things come together? David know that there is nothing that he can do to right his wrong. He knows that there is not some formula to follow to be restored to his former life. I do want you to see the corner that he turns. These words of his are among my favorite in the Bible, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.”

Now what should we do with these words this morning. I don’t suspect that many of us have committed the particular sin that David committed. I suspect none of us have failed to go to war, seen Bathsheba on the rooftop, and put her husband at the front line of a battle. Here is what I know. I know that the problem is sin, and I know that sin just most of the time gets the best of us. Most of us can relate to these words of David, My sin is ever before me.” Do you know what I mean? Do you know what that feels like? It feels like we’re on our knees, pleading for God to forgive the things that we have done. Some times this thing that we have done, we have done over and over again and we feel at odds with God, which, by the way, is a pretty good definition of sin. There is nothing that we can do about it. That is why the Bible uses serious words like conversion, repentance, and lost and found.

Church, let me practical this morning and let me be quickly practical with you this day because of the wonderful things that we are doing in our service this morning. Let me offer you three things that I think will help us all live abundant lives and get us right with God.

First, if there are any unconfessed things going on in your lives, go ahead and confess them. There’s a great line from another Psalm. Let me use another version of the Bible to bring it home to you. “There was a time when I wouldn’t admit what a sinner I was. But my dishonesty made me miserable and filled my days with frustration... until finally I admitted all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide them.” Confession, friends, as they say, is good for the soul. Really, it is telling God the thing you did that he saw you do. God does not need to hear it as much as you need to say it. Whether it’s too small to be mentioned or too big to be forgiven isn’t your decision to make. Your decision is to be honest. So confess. It is something to think about while we are at the altar this morning.

Second, if there are any unresolved conflicts in your lives, as far as it depends on you, try to make them right. There’s a great line in Jesus’ sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says that if you are about to make an offering and realize a grudge, then it is all right to abandon your offering and go to make things right. As far as I can tell, it is the only time in the Bible where it says that it is all right to leave church early. Do you see what God wants for us. He wants us to have clear consciences and great relationships.

And then, third, and this one is mostly for me. If there are any worries in your heart, give them to God. First Peter puts this thought, this way, “Give all your worries to him, because he cares about you.” The German word for worry really means to strangle. The Greek word means

to divide the mind. Both are true. Listen to the words of the preacher one more time. “Uh, I think that the problem is on the inside.” Let us pray.

(Special thanks to Max Lucado for the opening story and for some of the thoughts of this sermon. Thanks to David who wrote these wonderful words, honest words, that we all need to think about from time to time. And thanks be to God who forgives us and restores us to a great relationship with Him when we desire it)