“Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. 2. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. 3. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.”
These verses are the heart-cry of a man grieving over his sins. The man is David, and the sins are those pertaining to Bathsheba and her husband Uriah. You probably know the story of how David committed adultery with Bathsheba, and when she told David that she was pregnant, to make a long story short, he had her husband killed in battle. I think that you will agree that David had a lot to be forgiven for. He committed adultery, he committed murder, and then he tried to lie his way out of it. Thus, we have these verses in our Bible. I was thinking about these verses this morning, and it occurred to me that David wished that this had never happened. As the old saying goes, “If wishes were horses, we would all take a ride.” There was nothing that David could do to undo what he had done, and he, just like us, was not allowed “do over’s.” When David asked God to “blot out (his) transgressions,” he meant for God to help him forget, to blot it out of his mind. All David could do, and all that we can do, is to seek God’s forgiveness, accept forgiveness when it is given and move on. David did what we can do, and that is what will follow in this article. In seeking God’s forgiveness, David asked for God’s mercy. “Mercy” and “grace” are two words that we do not want to be taken out of the Bible. Since we can’t undo past sins, the only thing that we can do is to throw ourselves on God’s mercy. One thing that strikes me about these verses is David’s sincere sorrow over what he had done. When we seek God’s mercy, we need to be sure that we sincerely know that we need His mercy. This was no empty plea that David was making to God. If we want to experience the mercy of God, we must have sincere sorrow for what we have done. I remember when my parents caught me doing something that I should not have done that I would plead for mercy, not because I was really sorry, but because I had been caught red-handed. (Don’t think too harshly of me, you probably did the same thing.) After we get a little more mature, we learn that being sorry for getting caught is not enough. I sense in David’s plea in these verses a sincere need for God’s mercy and forgiveness. You can’t undo anything from your past, but you can sincerely seek God’s mercy and He will give it – as He did for David. We have to remember when we seek God’s mercy and He gives it that this does not erase the consequences of what we did. David could not uncommit (I know, computer, that this is not a word, shut up, I just made it up.) adultery; he could not bring Uriah back to life, nor could he unlie. (Shut up computer, this is my article.) David’s kingdom was never the same again, and he had to face many hardships after his adulterous fiasco. Another thing that we have to do is to accept God’s discipline in our lives. But that is not a bad thing. We find the answer to that in Hebrews 12:6-8: “For whom the Lord loves, He chastens (disciplines) and scourges every son whom He receives. 7. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father does not chasten? 8. But if you be without chastisement, where all are partakers, then you are fatherless children and not sons.” If you have been disciplined for sin rejoice you are a child of God. The best thing for us to do is to beware of the temptations that we face daily, and refuse to succumb to those temptations, and then there will be no need to “undo.” Let us rejoice that our God is a God of mercy, and that He will not let us off, but that He will keep us on! Bro. Joe
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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