In the last installment of our series on David, Pete explores the topic of forgiveness.
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You cannot be too sinful for God only Too Proud to accept his cleansing and his Forgiveness is this the first week with the new lecon it’s a brand new and this one comes with all the gadgets I I heard this is specifically requested by Pete that it had a drinks holder is that true that sounds wrong but yes it is true well Pete um I’m
Going to hand over to you um to conclude the series us thank you Joel um for doing that notice so brilliantly and for spending longer introducing the lecon than me uh so um this is as Joel says the concluding message in this series that we’ve been uh doing exploring the life
Of a remarkable uh patriarch King David and so the first uh talk was Jill Weber thinking about the many ways in which David might have felt forgotten as a young man and then Adam uh did a brilliant job a a phenomenal job uh talking about faith the faithfulness of
David uh Then Pete Burton last week uh talked about uh again brilliantly about uh David being someone who is deeply flawed and I’m bringing it all into land as we think about King David as someone who was forgiven forgotten faithful flawed and forgiven and then uh one of the reasons
We we’re ending this series today is of course next Sunday we’ll be into lent you knew that already and that’ll be the season that leads us up to Easter uh big week this week we got Valentine’s night on Wednesday anyone want to admit they totally
Forgotten uh I want to let you know I hadn’t and um you know it’s important to romance your wife and I’ve booked a table I’ve booked a table uh sami’s Furious she says she doesn’t like snooker but uh kadouch uh thank you so much um well of course we all do need
Forgiveness and our world desperately needs forgiveness from massive situations like what’s going on in the Middle East to your local playground forgiveness is perhaps the attribute most absent from society today and um you know Nick Cave the the the sort of Godfather of goth Rock In His Brilliant book uh faith hope and
Carnage uh talks very movingly about forgiveness he talks about um the tragic death of his teenage son in um a drug related fall in Brighton and how he and his wife obviously struggle uh with many deep deep areas of grief around that but one of them is a
Sense of Shame as parents and he says this there is not a song or a word or a stitch of thread that is not asking for forgiveness that is not saying we are just so sorry and so we’re going to think together about forgiveness David understood forgiveness more than
Most in our scripture reading we’re going to jump right to the end of David’s life as he is really reviewing his life and giving thanks to God for his faithfulness and so if you’re able to do so would you stand out of reverence the reading of God’s word in the scriptures
Please this is 2 Samuel 22 and we’re going to read verses 1 to 4 and then jump to the last verse of the chapter verse 51 David sang to the Lord the words of this song when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his
Enemies and from the hand of Saul he said the Lord is my rock my Fortress my deliverer my God Is My Rock in whom I take refuge my shield and the Horn of my salvation he is my stronghold my refuge My Savior from violent people you save
Me I called to the Lord who is worthy of praise and have been saved from my enemies and he continues in this vein uh for 46 more verses uh giving thanks to God for his faithful faithfulness and he concludes in verse 51 he gives his King great victories he shows unfailing
Kindness to his anointed to David and his descendants forever amen please be seated sorry it makes me laugh every time for those who are new here the seats just sound like a colony of seals every time you stand up and sit down it amuses me um we should buy the ion know some
WD40 so David is about to die and he’s looking back on an amazing life here he is the shepherd boy who slew the Giant Goliath with a SL L here is the solitary worshipper just having times of fellowship with the Lord whilst out tending the flocks who becomes the one
Who writes half the Psalms that will lead The Whole World In Worship one day here is the shepherd boy who becomes a soldier and as a soldier finds such success that he will eventually succeed Saul as king here is the architect of Jerusalem here is the one to whom God promised an everlasting
Dynasty here is the patriarch of Christ’s own Messianic line one of the most frequent titles given to Jesus is son of David there is no question that David was deeply favored by God and yet also and here is the contradiction this man who was so deeply favored was also as we real realized
Last week deeply flawed deeply favored and deeply flawed David reached the very Heights of Holiness and yet he also plumbed very depths of depravity and so as we saw last week he sinned in the most appalling way uh with bath Sheba it was not just a a slightly
Sort of ious Affair it was sexual abuse it was power abuse it was lying and deception and it was ultimately effectively the commissioning of murder we cannot man minimize how serious David’s sin How Deeply flawed he was as a person and so isn’t it extraordinary perhaps even shocking
After such appalling sin that David’s Legacy was not erased his Psalms were not redacted his Covenant was not cancelled and his Messianic line was not rerooted here he is at the a end of his life able to Proclaim God’s faithfulness God’s goodness God’s favor in spite of
The fact that he was also so deeply broken now even as I say this I realize aesh I suppose how radical this is how disturbing how offensive how appallingly countercultural the gospel the Bible is at a time when let’s be honest we live in a world where everyone is constantly
Trying to call other people out out and uh we want to when we when we catch people committing grave sin we want to lock them up and throw away the key we want to cancel them so let me say this first of all it it’s not that David’s sin is
Ignored or minimized in scripture quite the reverse David is dramatically called out by the Holy Spirit himself he’s confronted by Nathan the prophet a and and you know he is exposed for his sin and that isn’t just sort of you know the social media doing its thing that is
The holy spirit exposing corruption and sin and uh as we see more and more leaders being exposed in our world for appalling sin let us be quite clear that this is a work of the Holy Spirit this is a work of justice and of righteousness and of integrity and of
Holiness it’s an answer in many ways to our prayers down many years when we prayed Come Holy Spirit and so a spirit of Holiness has come to the church and to structures of society God is exposing and bringing down leaders who lie who abuse who are narcissists who are sexually
Immoral and actually as Christians let me go further we take these things more seriously than the world because we believe in Holiness we hate sin we expect leaders to have uh personal integrity and and lead by personal example you you know when it comes to voting this isn’t a party political
Statement by the way what I’m about to say but but it does matter if a leader is systematically breaking the Covenant commitment to the person they love the most how are we supposed to uh trust them if we put them into the highest office in the land if they are not
Telling the truth or F being honoring to their Promises at home and for years people used to say it doesn’t matter my private life is my thing my public life I can still do my duty and there’s something in us as Christians say no not so who you are your character the way
You behave in private says everything about your uh credibility and your competence in public and I know some of you will hear this now and some will listen online poly perhaps in other countries and and we think I’m in party political I am not I’m teaching the scriptures here David I is more
Significant than any president or prime minister and he is called out by God for his lack of Integrity he cannot get away with it okay as Christians we take these things more seriously but where we differ from the culture is that we also and this is the controversial bit believe in
Forgiveness we believe in Redemption we believe in restoration we believe in second and even third chances we believe in other words in amazing grace Amazing Grace and this is the bid of today’s message that is countercultural and even offens Ive in our world today and so of course the moment we
Talk about Amazing Grace we think about the song we hear the song in our heads we think about the guy who wrote it John Newton many of you will know extraordinary man lived 1725 to 1807 he ran away to Sea at the age of 11 and in a very very brutal World World
Of Sailors he was considered the worst he was more lewed he was more debed than any of the other Sailors there are accounts of him writing filthy using this gift he clearly had with poetry to write the most filthy uh words that his captain had to rebuke him for he uh wasn’t just
A non-Christian he mocked people who believed in God thought God was a myth and uh then he went from being a a you know in the Navy to actually becoming a slave trader let me just pause and let you feel that he he he he was a human
Trafficker the most heinous of crimes today and then there’s this moment where John Newton gets into a storm and he nearly drowns and begins to consider his fate and what his life is about and it’s a long journey for him in fact one of the key moments as he begins to quietly
Read a great book I’d encourage everyone here to read sometime by Thomas Aus called the imitation of Christ and eventually you know some people they get saved on the Damascus Road it’s very fast and dramatic and some people get slow saved on the Emmas Road it’s slow
And gentle like a door gently opening and the light coming through and gradually he comes to Faith In Jesus and then in the year 1772 he’s preaching a sermon one day and he is so moved by the scripture in that sermon that he he actually turns it to a
Song and he’s aged 47 at this point and his testimony becomes one of the most sung songs of all time Amazing Grace by the way I just sense the spirit speak to me that there’s someone here you are 47 years old the age at which Newton wrote
This song and there there’s things in your past and you feel you’ve missed it and um you you you kind of the die is cast and the Lord says that he is coming to you this year and he if you will let him he’s going to turn things around
Dramatically in ways you couldn’t believe and your greatest Legacy is to come but uh let’s just think about these amazing lyrics Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a Wretch like Me I once was lost but now am found found was blind but now I see it was Grace that
Taught my heart to fear and Grace my fears relieved how precious did that Grace appear the hour I first believed through many dangers toils and snares I have already come his grace hath brought me safe thus far and Grace will lead me home interestingly the sermon that Newton was
Preaching that gave him the title of this song Amazing Grace was about the life of David it was uh about a moment where David is confronted by Nathan on another occasion not the one where Nathan comes and calls him out about uh his affair and everything else but previously when Nathan comes and
Addresses David and tells him that God intends to maintain his family line forever and in response to this overwhelming moment of Grace and of favor David uh we read in 1 Chronicles 17 went and sat before the Lord and said who am I Lord God and what is my family
That you have brought me this far and as if this were not enough you Lord God have looked on me as though I were the most exalted of men there is no one like you lord and there is no God but you a and and so as Newton preached about
These beautiful verses David just sitting before the Lord going I don’t deserve this he received that line Amazing Grace and the rest really is history you see John Newton knew Amazing Grace in his own life a human trafficker saved by Grace and King David knew Amazing Grace in his life someone who commissioned
Murder who was unfaithful sexually who abused power and yet still at the end of his life able to thank God for his faithfulness flawed but favored Amazing Grace is the most powerful force on Earth GK Cheston writing about St Francis AI said this St Francis walked the world like the pardon
Of God isn’t that beautiful wouldn’t that be a beautiful thing for people to say about you in your workplace in in in in the family kitchen they were like the pardon of God that the person who was a Christian in my life wasn’t the one pointing the finger
And scowling they were the one constantly bringing Grace and forgiveness and acceptance and unconditional love Francis walked the world like the pardon of God so to illustrate this literally let me show you two pictures here’s the first one it’s the 20 sorry it’s bad quality but this is the 26th of June
1996 many of you will remember the moment the England manager at the time Terry venables is aged 53 and he is comforting Gareth Southgate who is aged 26 who has just missed a penalty that has cost England the semifinals of the European Cup at Wembley in front of a global audience of
507 million people now I know some people are saying it’s only football but they don’t understand when you let down a nation when you in the area you thought you were best to find that it is your place of greatest shame in front of 507 million people
Everything seems to have ended and so his manager who could so easily have pointed the finger and scaled age 53 has learned to be a father and comes and wraps his arm around the 26y old who feels like the greatest failure in the United Kingdom at that
Moment fast forward literally 20 5 years and now it’s the 11th of July 2021 and that 26-year-old player has become the new manager of England Gareth Southgate is now 50 years old and here he is comforting bukayo Saka age 19 who has just missed a penalty that has just cost
England the finals the finals of the European Cup at Wembley in front of a global audience get this of 845 million people do you understand Amazing Grace breaks the cycle of shame in our world because venables did that for Southgate and he never forgot it he didn’t back down he pushed ahead he
Became the manager and he knew exactly what to do when sackle was in his shoes Amazing Grace breaks the cycle and I long for the day when Christians don’t just be a bit nice but are sources of such forgiveness and Grace and unconditional love in our world that we
Break the cycles of Shame and failure and people feeling they can’t do it and that their lives are hopeless and that they’re not worth anything and we go in like venables and like Southgate and we wrap our arms around people and say it doesn’t matter you are loved you are
Accepted because when you do that you don’t just help that person to walk for another day you begin to change the flow of their lives so that they can do it for others cuz they experience in that moment something they may not have experienced from anyone else Amazing
Grace how sweet the sounds it’s what happened for King David it’s what happened for John Newton it’s why we must stand up against against the bullies who say lock them up and throw away the key and say no it’s as bad as you say it is but there is Greater Hope
Than you think there is in Jesus Christ amen and so this is literally a picture you’re seeing of Grace of fatherly Love That Forgives this is a picture of redemption but of course we’re thinking today about Amazing Grace not just for a missed penalty but for the atrocities of a
Slave trader called John Newton who truly repented Amazing Grace of the atrocities of King David when he finally confessed and repented Amazing Grace for the atrocities can we be honest in all of our hearts for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God if we will just come to the
Cross and that is the key that is the difference right there the cross of Jesus Christ the only way to understand how bewildering our world is on one level it seems more righteous than ever before but another level it feels more self-righteous and phical and legalistic than ever before the only way to
Navigate is with the cross because you see the cross tells us that our sins are actually worse than we ever imagined they pinned an innocent man to the Cross you can say well I’ve never done what David did but our sins pinned an innocent man to the Cross he died in
Our place and so there’s something that happens to us when we begin to focus on the cross of Christ that is deeply shaming in a good way is deeply humbling that says oh my God these things that I minimize are serious Jesus himself says you may not have
Murdered but have you been hateful you may not have committed adultery but have you been lustful and so that light gets Shone on us and the cross makes us realize the gravity of our sin it’s so much worse than the trolls say but the cross also this
Ultimate symbol of torture has become to the whole world the ultimate symbol of Grace and love and Redemption because in the cross whilst we realize our sin is worse and we thought we also find that God’s grace is greater than we ever dreamt it could be we are deeply flawed
But deeply favored Amazing Grace you know um when our son um my first son was born hudie um some of you heard me say this before but we Samy and I were kind of shocked by the whole experience you know I took three years learning Theology and sociology at
University but had had about three minutes learning how to be a dad which was frankly really hard and suddenly this little human being comes back home from St Mary’s Hospital in Portsmouth I drove at about 15 miles an our home swearing I will never ever drive a car more than this
Ever a and we carry him into the house and just everything everything everything changes at that moment our little one-bedroom flat and um you know Hudson proceeded to do things to me no human being had ever done before he he he woke me every two hours through the
Night he screamed regularly in my face ah there’s the time I’m holding him in the air he’s laughing I’m laughing a long stringy bit of dribble lands in my mouth he puked on me you’re so sleep deprived that you go out saying oh it’s only baby puke don’t
Worry you’re constantly rocking him so that to this day sometimes you’ll still see me in tesos with the the shopping cart doing that just rocking the Corn Flakes to sleep it gets into you this stuff and then there’s the time it was summertime and I was changing Hudson’s nappy and
Uh you know there’s something nice you’ve cleaned them all up they’re just clean they smell good and felt kind of proud of myself and I just it was summer time I just thought he doesn’t need another napon immediately some of the women here are like oh you
Fool and and and and here’s the really embarrassing confession when I was growing up there was a poster that quite a lot of girls seem to have on their bedroom walls of this bloke with a six-pack masterfully holding a baby like that I don’t know if anyone remembers it
And it suddenly flashed into my head because this is an insight into the male psyche I want to be that man just for a moment and so I was masterfully in my head carrying Hudson round completely naked outside scrunching in muscles I don’t have just in shorts and a and
Flip-flops at when all hell broke loose and something un variably evil flow down me and I end up with a small puddle in my flipflop Hudson did things to me that no human being had ever done before and yet I found that I loved him compulsively I just couldn’t help myself
When he’s dirty I had to clean him up there was no thought about well let’s leave him to it it’s his problem you know he could scream in my face and spit in my mouth and puke on me me and wait me every 2 hours and poo on
Me and I still found that I loved him like I’d never loved any human being ever before a and the difference of course is fatherhood I’ve got good friends but if any of them spatter in my mouth and woke me every two hours and puked on me and
Pooed on me I’d struggle to like them let alone love them the difference is fatherhood and so I find myself s to God God when you say that you’re my Father in Heaven surely you don’t mean this surely you just mean you kind of love me theologically you know I despise you but
I love you I don’t know why God speaks in that accent or or may surely God you just mean you know you have to love me because otherwise there’d be some philosophical like vacuum created in reality you’re kind of forced to love and of course something within me knew
Immediately God saying no I love you I am love it’s impossible for me not to love you because it is my very being it is ontologically true I am love I look at you with love and when you scream at me and when you hassle me continually
And when you make me dirty even with your sin all I can do is hold you and clean you up because that’s what a father does and we say Amazing Grace when I was dead in my sin you picked me up and got dirty with me and you cleaned us up together the
Cross says it’s worse than we thought and better than we thought and so let me just finish by saying this you cannot be too sinful for God only Too Proud to accept his cleansing and his forgiveness no matter what you have done there is always more grace in God
Than sin in you if you will just dare to take one step back towards him you will see the father come running towards you to embrace you that’s the parable of the prodical son receiving the grace of God is the beginning of redemption Dane ortland in his beautiful
Uh book humble and lowly says this it is only as we drink down the kindness of the heart of Christ that we will leave in our wake everywhere we go the aroma of Heaven and die one day having startled the world with glimpses of a Divine kindness too great to be Boxed In
By what we deserve isn’t that great dane ortland gentle and lonely to uh read that book if you can and so we’re just going to respond now and it’d be great to get the band back up and I think we may even sing Amazing Grace uh together but I wonder
If you find yourself a little offended by by this message personally because each one of us If we’re honest at times struggles to receive Grace and to believe God’s unconditional love we think if if he really knows what I think and the way I’m wired and who I
Am maybe it’s not just how B how bad I am but how boring I am he there’s nothing about me that God would be overwhelming in love with but he is love or maybe you find it hard to receive Grace and believe in God’s unconditional love because you feel like
The ways you’ve messed up your life have forever damaged your future you have missed the boat you are Beyond hope and I want to tell you today there is Amazing Grace if at the age of 47 John Newton can pan a song that changes the world that there hope for
You or maybe there’s something in this message that has slightly offended you culturally because it’s so easy isn’t it to get caught up in councel culture that’s all about critiquing but not about building and restoring and redeeming it’s so busy to easy to be busy calling out sin that we minimize
Grace I wonder if perhaps for some of us there’s someone that we need to forgive today we need to break the cycle and show unconditional love maybe there’s someone to whom we need to give a second chance remember Jesus says we should pray forgive us our sins as we forgive those
Who sin against us and so as the band begins to uh play now let’s just I think what we’re going to do is just sing Amazing Grace together and as we do so just ask what is this grace for you what does it mean for you in your own
Life in your own thinking what are the ways in which as God showed his grace to David he wants to show his grace to you not to cancel you but to redeem you when you repent and to bring you into a new future and are there ways in which some
Of us have got so swept up in the ways of this world that whilst we share in the critique of sin we have lost track of redemption and that our desire is not to pull people down but to change their lives that we might build them up and
Release them into the fullness of all that God has for them even though they are flawed they are still favored and you see if we don’t do this for others what hope is there for us because there isn’t one of us in this room one of us listening online who is
Favored but not flawed every every one of us has reached the heights of Holiness at times but also plumbed the very depths of depravity and in the cross we find Grace so let’s sing this together Now