Sermon: "A Clean Heart"

Delivered February 17, 2010 (Ash Wednesday) by Rev. George Antonakos.
Sermon Text: Matthew 23:35-38

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Let us pray: Lord, we thank you for the word that we have read. We pray that you would help us to understand it, as well as these words from your lips, so that we might truly open our hearts to you and begin Lent in the way that you would want us to. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen.

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness."

The passage that we read from Psalm 51 will be the basis of what I share with you tonight. And what I think, probably most of you realize this, but the Scripture, when you turn to Psalm 51 on page 520, the little introduction that's under the Psalm 51 really is part of the scriptural writ. It's part of the text. Let me read that to you, "For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba."

Psalm 51 is based on one of those S-E-X stories in the Bible. Since it's Lent, I have to spell the word. It's taken from 2 Samuel, chapter 11. If they had TV back then, this would be a plot for a TV show called Desperate House Kings or Desperate Kings of Israel. The thing that thickens the plot so much is that the person involved was really no spiritual slouch. As a young man, he had more faith than the entire army of Israel.

Not only that, he had been anointed by a prophet. And his prayers make up a good part of the Psalms in the Bible. But on one particular spring day, when he should have been busy in battle, he decided to take a personal day from work. It seems that he stayed in bed all day, because the Scripture reports that he got out of bed in the evening and started to walk around on the roof of his palace, and from that vantage point spied a very beautiful woman who was taking a bath. Her name was Bathsheba.

You know the rest of the story, right? If you don't, you probably want to really read it now. Taking advantage of his powerful position, King David calls for Bathsheba, he has sex with her, and then she goes off back to her home. Even though he knows that she's the wife of another man. What he thought was going to be an uncomplicated fling gets complicated very quickly, because he gets word not too many weeks later that she is pregnant.

David, descendant of Jacob, starts to connive and deceive. And so he has Uriah, Bathsheba's husband, brought off the field. He tries to encourage him to go and have sex with his wife. But Uriah doesn't do it, and when David asks him why, he says, "Because all my fellow warriors are out there taking battle and putting their lives on the line, I'm not going to go have pleasure." You think that would have shamed David, but it didn't. Because in the next day or two, he gets him drunk and he tries to do the same thing, and Uriah just simply will not fold because he's in solidarity with his fellow warriors.

And so, at that point, he says to his commander Joab, "Put him in the fiercest part of the battle. Withdraw from him so that he'll die." And that's exactly what happened. And then David takes Bathsheba as his wife. And the chapter ends at verse 27, with a very sobering and chilling sentence, "But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD." The Lord then sends Nathan the prophet, who confronts David the king. David repents and confesses his sin, and Psalm 51 is the result.

As I was thinking about what to share tonight as we start in Lent, I was looking through one of my completed life journals. And I came upon an entry from May 6, 2008, and it was from Psalm 51. And what I noted as I was going through it that day, that there are three references in the psalm to the human heart, at least in the New Revised Standard Version. And here are the three things that this psalm says about the human heart, and it describes the kind of heart that David really wanted to have, and the type of heart that God really wants us to have. And so I think it's helpful to look at these three descriptions of the heart as we start out on this 40-day Lenten journey.

The first is found in verse 6. "Surely you desire truth in the inner parts. You teach me wisdom," and the NRSV says, "in my secret heart." New International says, "in the inmost place," "in the inner parts." Repentance and confession, which is what this night is all about, has to do with the core of our being. David says, "You teach me in my secret heart."

David's sin wasn't limited to lust and adultery. At its depth, it was about deception. He was so devious while he was portraying kindness to Uriah. He was acting like a comrade to Uriah, and yet he was so painfully to the reader a fake. So when he came to his senses through the exposure of God's Word, it's no wonder that he thinks about the condition of his heart. That's what Lent is about, the condition of our heart, and exploring it. He wanted God to overhaul the place where he alone knew, and that God knew even better. He wanted to not only confess his deception towards others but to admit his deception toward himself.

Listen carefully to this quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. "Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. He who is alone with his sins is utterly alone." So repentance and confession break into that spiritual loneliness and bring us heart healing. So David prays, "God, give me an honest heart." Would you repeat that with me? God, give me an honest heart.

The second description of the heart in this psalm is in verse 10. When David asks God to create in him "a clean heart." Some versions say "pure heart." I think this speaks to an ongoing process of confession. Confession is not just once and done, confession is something that takes place as a lifestyle as we walk with God. Sometimes people wonder, "Well, if I'm a Christian and God has already forgiven my sins, why do I have to confess?" To ask the question misses the point of why confession is so important as a discipline.

In some ways, confession is a lot like giving money. God doesn't need our money. We need the spiritual blessing of being detached from this world in a little bit better way as we give money as a sign of our love for God. Confession is not like God is holding back his mercy like a kid with his last cookie. God wants to pour out his mercy. Confession is for us, in order to be healed and changed.

So two things happen in confession that promotes a clean heart. Number one, when we confess our sins, we truly confess our sins to God, name them, we are cleansed of the guilt of our sin. One of the meanings of "sin" in Hebrew is "stain." Sin is like a stain, and one of the greatest stains of sin is guilt. And guilt is a terrible companion, so confession is like Oxiclean. It removes the stubborn stains. And the second thing that happens when we confess is that we'll be a little less likely to repeat that sin than if we had not confessed. So it's a process.

Think of a glass of water. If you have a full glass water, if you let it sit, it can be clean to start, but eventually it'll turn stagnant. The only way to keep that glass of water clean is for the water from the faucet to constantly be running in it and replacing it over and over again. That's the only way it'll remain pure and clean. The Scripture speaks of the "washing of the water through the Word," and so it's the Word of God that has to constantly be pouring into our lives so that we can offer God a clean and pure heart.

When Nathan confronted David in 2 Samuel 12:9, do you remember his words? Do you remember what he started with? If it was me, I would have started with, "Why did you commit adultery? Why did you lie like that? Why were you so deceptive?" Listen to what Nathan says to David, "Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes?" And then he names the particulars. A clean heart is established by the continuous flow of God's word. That's why David, at another time in Psalm 119, asks the question, "How can a young person keep his way pure? By keeping it according to your word." "Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee." David prayed, "God, give me a clean heart." Would you say that with me? God, give me a clean heart.

The third thing, in verse 17, "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." "A broken and contrite heart." There's a huge difference between feeling sorry and remorseful, versus being broken and contrite. One time a policeman pulled a car over for a person not wearing a seatbelt, but when the policeman got to the side window, the guy was wearing his seatbelt and acting like he hadn't done anything wrong. And he kept saying that he was wearing his seatbelt, to which the officer said, "Well, do you always loop it through the steering wheel?"

See before we get caught, we cover and connive. After we get caught, even if we get caught red-handed, we can still fake being sorry. And in part, true confession involves taking responsibility for what we've done. It's not easy, and we try to slip out of it. What starts as a confession often sounds more like an excuse. "I didn't mean to yell at you, I was having a bad day." That's not a broken and contrite heart.

The person with a broken and contrite heart says within and without, "I made a choice. Because of my proneness to sin, because maybe I was trying to avoid consequences. Left to myself, God, that's what I'll always do what I'll always be like. But it was a choice that I made, and it doesn't need to be excused, it doesn't need to be explained, it doesn't need to be even understood, dear God, it needs to be forgiven." A broken and contrite person knows that's the need and doesn't make excuses. And even more, a broken and contrite heart works toward avoiding a repetition of that error.

You know, the beautiful thing about this psalm, most of all: David knew that he was already forgiven when he wrote it. So confession can really only occur as an act of grace, in the context of grace, which is why this table is at the center of our gathering this evening. This night is about repentance, about coming clean. It's what Jesus was after, in the spirit of Nathan, as he was speaking to the Pharisees about looking good on the outside and being quite false on the inside.

Here's how I ended my journal entry, and how I'll end this message. The application part of this journal, "This is a three-fold reminder, these three words of God's desire that I be open and honest before him. Wisdom in the secret heart, creating a clean heart, and possessing a broken and contrite heart. Apart from this transparency, I will find a way to lurk in the shadows, justify behavior, and have a negative effect on all around me." And the prayer, "Gracious God, hear my prayer. You alone know my heart. You alone know any attempt at dissembling or self-deception. You alone can create the kind of heart that will save me from grievous consequences, and instead will bring wholeness and healing to my life and my relationships. Amen."

© 2010, Rev. George Antonakos
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org