Dealing with
Your Mind
In this study we deal with our mind and the way we think; the way we
think about people; with what we do with our imagination; the way we fantasize
and see what is not yet, and remember what is in the past.
All of my mind: my emotions, my energies, those great mighty energies that
course through my being, all of those, it says in Romans 13, must be
presented to God. I must never let sin get a foothold in my mind; it’s the
only part of me where sin can get a foothold. Once it gets a foothold
there, it can turn me upside down and reign my body over me instead of my
spirit reigning over me.
I want us to be very practical,
because some of what I have been saying in previous lessons could be very ethereal.
How do you present your members to Him when you are faced with problems and trouble and everything seems to be
going wrong?
A Look At
Psalms
I’ve chosen Psalms to point that out, because many of the Psalms were written by deeply hurting
people. David spills his guts in Psalms. David tells us exactly where he’s
at. You might say that when you read the Psalms, you’re going into
surgery, and you are watching as the knife is applied in the very anatomy
of the soul. All the organs of the soul are displayed in the raw.
Every move of human emotion, every joy
you’ve had, every sorrow you’ve had, is in Psalms. It’s there. They
are case histories: they are telling me how to handle trouble. It doesn’t
just report that a man was depressed and how he felt; it lets us know how
he handled it: in God.
David
Let's look at Psalm 109. To really get into seeing ourselves in
Psalms, we want to find out when they were written. In some of them it is
hard to find out; others are easier. You’ll find there are two times in
David’s life when really all the emotions hit him. The middle of his
life was pretty even and he wrote a lot of the worship songs, but at the
beginning of his life there was his father-in-law, King Saul. And King
Saul made his life hell on earth. Out of that came many psalms as he
wrestled with how do you deal with an impossible person who just wants to
get you when you’ve done nothing to him.
Then at the end of his life was one of the
greatest tragedies that he lived through. That was when Absalom, his son,
rose up against him and sent an army against him to kill him, and tried to
take over the throne. He had to go through civil war, and in the end
Absalom was killed, and there came that great lament when David said,
"Absalom, Absalom, oh my son, I would have died for you if I could…"
You remember that great lament? And so there it is, Saul at one end, and
Absalom at the other.
I believe that this psalm, 109, though
some may disagree, deals with the Absalom period; but if it dealt with the
Saul period, well, it’s still the same idea. But, certain things here
fit in very well with what happened with Absalom.
David's
Counselor
Let me give you a background to this psalm. Way back before Absalom led
the rebellion, David had a special friend. I would try to find a bigger
word than special friend, a covenant friend, best friend, confidant,
dearest friend, who was a very wise person. It was not just friendship.
David went to that man and told him his heart and that man could speak
wisdom into David. And when it came to the matters of state when David was
King, he would call in this man and they would sit down and discuss the
problems of state.
The man just had wisdom; it seemed he just
picked it out of God’s head and he was able to say what ought to be
done. His name was Ahithophel. Those two would go to the house of God
together, they would fast together, they would meet together, they couldn’t
be parted. Now, Ahithophel had a granddaughter and she was the apple of
his eye. Her name was Bathsheba. And David had that awful affair with
Bathsheba, you may recall that. And out of that came the senseless killing
of Bathsheba’s husband; and out of that came the brazen taking of
Bathsheba and making her his wife.
The whole thing stunk in the nostrils of
Israel. The gossips were everywhere. The Inquirer had front page.. 20/20
was there. Everybody was talking; they knew there was something going on.
When the whole thing came out about a year later it was sick; it was
rotten to the core. And Ahithophel’s best, favorite little
granddaughter, the flower of his life, is the one whose name was being
dragged into all that dirt. And she’s involved in it. But, all he can do
is blame David.
David repented. Did he ever repent. Publicly.
And with Psalm 51 he poured out his heart and repented before God. In
terms of repentance he came out to the people. But, as far as Ahithophel
was concerned, he hasn’t repented enough. Ahithophel, using his own
human wisdom as to how to deal with the case, gave a sweet buttery smile
and appeared to accept the repentance, but he stayed ready one day to get
David. Inwardly he was thinking, no man takes my granddaughter and does
what he did to her and gets away with it. He has shamed our family. And
the years passed, and Ahithophel waited his time. And there were problems
with Absalom, which is another story, but it’s enough to say there were,
and Ahithophel went in with Absalom.
You know how it goes. You know how gossips
work. Hear a word, there a word, listen, nod, sympathize, and gradually
Ahithophel wove a web in the palace and all the time he was still David’s
best friend and David believed he was his best friend and poured out his
heart to Ahithophel and still received his counsel and wisdom.
Then comes that awful day when David, who
really should have known better, there’s much to blame him for, got the
news that Absalom had declared himself king and was marching even now on
Jerusalem and was determined to kill David and take the throne. And David
had to flee Jerusalem, and as he went, he was in deep mourning: he wore
the sackcloth of the day which showed he was mourning the death of a dear
friend. He put ashes in his hair; which they did in funerals, he went out
a sad and broken man fleeing from his own son.
David Betrayed
At a place, which in a thousand years time would be a garden of Gethsemane,
he stood up there looking over Jerusalem. Then he went off into the
wilderness, it’s such a wretched sad story. Then he got more news back
through his spies. There came one piece of information worse than the
rest, that Ahithophel had joined with Absalom, and was now Absalom’s
chief counselor.
David said, Dear God, that
man knows more about me than I know about myself. That man knows my
weakest spots. And if he’s gone over to Absalom, I don’t stand a
chance. Having gotten over that political shock, next came the real shock.
My friend, my dearest friend, the one that I dared to open my whole life
to and become a covenant friend to, has turned against me.
Then rage, sheer blind
rage, rose inside of David. What that man has done to me. David said, if
it was my enemy I could take it, if it had been someone who had gone
around the palace spitting my name, cursing me, I would expect this. But,
you, my friend, the one that I trusted, you that I gave my life to, you we
took sweet walk together in the house of God, you we counseled together in
days of trouble, you! Ahithophel, my friend, I can’t take this, I want
revenge. I want murder.
What David
Does NOT Do
How does this man handle that? I know you’re a strange human being if
you haven’t been there. It may not be at that level, but you know what
betrayal is. Somewhere down the line someone has betrayed you. You know,
when somebody does something and you feel the knife going between your shoulder blades,
and you know you’ve been stabbed you in the back. You know when your
best friend turns on you and you stand speechless and say how can they do
that? We’ve all been there. A business relationship with your partner,
where your partner cheated you, fleeced you? I just wonder how many
listening to this have been through divorce.
You see David is called in the scripture a
man after God’s own heart. So, I’m fascinated with knowing how he
handles this. Because what are we talking about here? We’re talking
about his emotions. We’re talking about his mind. We’re talking about
a mind that would plot revenge, an imagination that’s gone to the big
screen, and is showing this over and over again on the late night movie;
it’s going round and round and round in his mind. How does he handle
this?
Let’s really look at this. Let’s be
very practical. He does not lash out in screams and curses, or the New
Testament word in old English is clamor. The word as in "put away all
clamor". That’s it: when you yell and you scream and people can
hear you three blocks away: that’s clamor. He didn’t do that.
Nor did he become physical. He wasn’t
throwing chairs, and putting his fist through the wall; David didn’t
lash out at furniture and people because of what had happened. Nor did he
turn around and send a hit man to kill Ahithophel, which in those days was
perfectly acceptable. Nor did he set out to have pity parties with his old
cronies to shred the character of Ahithophel to everybody he could find.
Now, I covered that pretty quickly, but you know that these are very real
ways in which people handle things like this.
How do we handle it? We find all our
cronies and we tell them all this wretched creep has done to us, and we
shred him up one side and down the other, and we look for somehow we might
get even. We do get clamorous and throw stuff around and shout.
David doesn’t do that. He’s a man
after God’s own heart, and if I’m going to present my members, my
physical frame, if that’s not going to be the landing realm of sin, then
I choose not to do that.
Denial
Pretends To Be Forgiveness
Ah, but careful now, he does not pretend that he isn’t angry. Now this
is very, very important, so important that we could almost get lost here.
Some people are very, very hesitant to admit that they’re upset. You
know, with some people it’s their ethnic background, it’s their
upbringing, it’s their genes. They believe nice people don’t get
angry. That ladies and gentlemen don’t get angry; it’s those scum of
the gutter that get angry. So if you’re nice, you have nice thoughts,
and when people do nasty things you smile sweetly; you’re a nice person,
you’re a gentleman; you don’t feel angry; you’re above that, you
see. This somehow came over with the pilgrims; there are some people who
are in this category.
This idea gets itself in religious garb
and it says that Christians don’t get angry. But, I find more mental,
emotional disaster in churches because of this one thing: that we will not
allow ourselves to admit that we have anger; that we’re enraged because
of what people did. We’re good Christians and good Christians don’t do
that, we think. If I were sanctified, then my emotions would be on an even
keel the whole time; I would never have any feelings of anger.
Monsters in
the Basement
And so when I feel anger, I don’t know what to do with it. This is
illegal. I’m a Christian. I’m supposed to not feel anger and so I do
at least two things, I don’t let you know that I’m angry; I put on a
sweet face, sweet graciousness. I wouldn’t want to let you know I’m
angry, because I want you to keep on thinking that I’m a good Christian.
But, secondly, I want me to think I’m a good Christian so I take hold of
that ugly stinking anger and I push it into the basement of my soul.
Because I hate myself: I’m an ugly disgusting creature getting angry
like that. I’m a good Christian so I suppress it. I don’t altogether
understand how it happens, but I end up believing that I’m not angry.
You can actually not feel anger because
you push it down so far. It doesn’t mean it’s gone, it just
means you’ve got good bolts on your basement door, but it’s down
there. It’s growing, believe me it’s growing. You put a lizard in the
basement and it’s already halfway to a dinosaur; it’s growing fast.
You see you have self hate there. You’re disgusted with your anger.
You say, I never could allow that; I
wouldn’t do that. You become disgusted with someone who is angry; and
all the Pharisee comes out in you: you’re disgusted by the fact that
they’re angry. The truth is you’ve just seen yourself in a mirror and
all the hate for yourself, you take it out on them.
But, David didn’t do that as I’m going
to show you in a moment. This denial I’ve described in the church can be
mistaken for forgiveness. I’ve seen churches split over this because
people will not handle the problem. I hurt you. What do you say? Oh, it’s
all right. Praise God, no problem.
It isn’t all right! I hurt you! And you
cannot forgive anyone until you admit that they hurt you. What are you
forgiving, if they didn't hurt you? So, there’s no forgiveness.
It’s a silly idea Christians don’t
feel anger; that’s immaturity, to think we don’t get hurt. If you deny
I hurt you, you can’t forgive me, because that would mean you’d have
to admit I hurt you. So you leave me unforgiven and you are still left
with the anger raging in your basement. Only by now you’ve got a zoo
going on down there. They’re all growing up; into dinosaurs, monsters.
We hear, don’t make a mountain out of a
molehill; let bygones be bygones; it happens in the best of families. No,
no, that’s not forgiveness; but it passes for forgiveness in many
churches. The fact you don’t smash me in the face, makes you such a
sweet, gentle person. No, you’ve done something with that anger. That
anger is throwing furniture around in your basement while you are
sweet-faced.
Explosive
Secrets - Malice & Bitterness
Nor, does David put on that quiet front. He doesn’t pretend while really
inside he’s pulling back his bow and waiting with an arrow aimed. We can
wait with bow drawn for twenty years, don’t worry. And that’s what
Ahithophel had done, you see. Ahithophel didn’t deny his anger,
Ahithophel knew he was mad, only he didn’t let anybody else know it. He
quietly got his bow ready, and he waited and he waited and waited, but
when he got his chance, that’s what the Bible calls bitterness or
malice.
Malice means, hang in there, I’m going
to get you. And while I’m waiting, I’ll smile, and praise God with
you, and shake your hand, and bless you, but don’t worry, I’ll get
you. You’re written in my little book, and every time you do anything to
add to this it’s just going to make it all the more juicy when I get
you.
But, David doesn’t do that. That’s the
wonderful thing about David, if you go down the list of things he didn’t
do, suddenly he emerges as the man after God’s own heart.
Your Body
Reveals Your Mind
You’re beginning to see, if you do any of those things, if you try to
suppress anger, you are going to become sick. There’s no question about
it. You are fighting your own physical, mental, spiritual destiny. Your
body is not made to handle that. Did you know? That’s a fascinating
fact. My body, let alone anything else, was fashioned by my creator to
love. And if I don’t love, my body won’t function. If I hate you, a
poison is put into my bloodstream that will kill me in the end. Isn’t
that amazing? My body functions lovingly. And if I don’t love, it won’t
function. It works like that. We become depressed.
My mind was not created to handle hate and
unlove. My emotions were created to love, not to hold unforgiveness and
hate. So, I get sickness in my body; I become depressed and filled with
despair and hopelessness and that drives me to medicate it and then I find
myself in the doctor’s office and in the hospital. I’ll do anything to
escape the hideous world I find myself in. I’ll eat myself crazy trying
to desperately do something to reduce this pain that is raging inside me
because I will not admit the truth: that I’m angry with you. I might
have been mad with you until you left, but I’m still mad with you;
twenty years later I’m still mad at you.
All of that I’ve just described, if you’re
into any of it, Biblically that is a sinful handling of the emotions and
the mind. That is not an honest mind; it is not presenting my members to
God. In all of these cases I am trying to do something; I’m not
presenting it to God.
Anger Happens
OK, what is this awful thing, anger, we hide in the basement and we’re
ashamed of as a good Christian? Well, you might as well face it, it’s
part of being human. Anger is a response to injustice. We have a sense of
injustice. That’s normal for a human being. If you don’t feel anger in
some way, there must be a lot of dinosaurs in your basement.
Anger is our response to injustice. Jesus
was angry. Jesus was angry, and angry on more than one occasion: angry in
the temple when he saw what they had done; angry at the Pharisees for
their lack of compassion for the sick. Did you notice how He responded one
time when which was not so obvious, the time they came to him and tried to
get him in a corner? Jesus responses to them were pretty harsh. I mean He
wasn’t gentle Jesus meek and mild. He let them know right away he knew
what they were thinking and he knew where they were going and he wasn’t
going to stand for it. Jesus was very up front with feelings that would be
negative feelings. Revenge even. The desire for revenge is the desire to
see wrong things set right. It may have gotten screwed up in our head, but
basically we see something that is wrong, and we want it put right.
And so, anger, and it’s craving for
revenge, is not altogether wrong in it’s beginnings; where we take it is
the problem. We’ll get there in a minute, but if you think anger is
wrong, you’re off on the wrong foot.
David Vented
His Anger to God
You see David handled this as he handled everything: he brought the hurt,
he brought these feelings that he had, feelings in the raw, and his desire
for revenge; he brought it all to God. He presented it to God. In the
language of Romans 6, he presented it like it was.
Now, I want you to look at this psalm.
Psalm 109. We can’t read this like they teach you to read it in
seminary. This man is spitting blood. I want you to feel this. David has
gotten the news of what Ahithophel has done and he comes now to God with
the matter.
It begins OK. You see he’s not lashing
out at Ahithophel; he’s not having a pity party; he’s come to God.
O God of my praise, do not be silent.
(Where have you been God? It’s time you did some talking. And in case
you missed it,) for they have opened the wicked and deceitful mouth
against me, they have spoken against me with lying tongue. They have also
surrounded me with words of hatedred, they fought against me without a
cause. In return for my love, they act as my accusers. But, I am in
prayer, thus they have repayed me evil for good, and hate for my love.
(Just in case you missed it, God. OK, now listen to this. This is how I
feel God.) Appoint a wicked man over him. Let an accuser stand at his
right hand. When he is judged, let him come forth guilty. Let his prayer
become sin; let his days be few; let another take his office, let his
children be fatherless, his wife a widow, let his children wander about
and beg…
Yes. Do you believe in the inspiration of
the Bible? It goes on.
Let his posterity be cut off. In the
following generation let their name be blotted out. Let the iniquity of
his fathers be remembered before the LORD. Do not let the sin of his
mother be blotted out. Let them be continually before the LORD that they
may cut off his memory from the earth.
It goes on like that ‘til verse twenty.
That’s pretty bad, isn’t it? That’s venom. I mean every sentence is
like a nuclear warhead pointed at Ahithophel and Absalom. This man is mad.
What do you do with that?.
I’m sure if I could see your face, you’d
look shocked. We don’t read this Psalm in public usually. It’s not
something you read in church. In fact, in the Church of England Prayer
Book, it says that the priest can leave this out if he wants to. It’s
not nice, you see. It doesn’t sound like a good Christian; it doesn’t
sound like a gentleman. Let him be cut off? Let his children lose their
father? Let them become orphans? That’s not nice. He said that; I’m
not getting around it. He meant it.
And you see, our trouble is that we’re
shocked by that. We’re almost ashamed. If I gave a survey and asked how
many of you have felt like that before in your life, you’d be ashamed to
admit to such feelings. We’re not supposed to have feelings like that.
If I have them, I don’t want God to know. I don’t want to have an
honest mind. I couldn’t come and tell Him how I feel. I want Him to
think I’m a good Christian.
Do you hear what I’m saying? This David,
he is not suppressing this, is he? There’s no basement here; this is
right out in the front yard where he’s saying it. He’s not medicating
it. He’s not saying, give me a Tylenol or a Prozac, he’s saying, God
this is it!
It Can Be
Revealing
I want you to notice something else. When he started talking the whole lot
came out. My words, many times, will express my feelings beyond what I’m
really feeling. Once I start talking, I start realizing I feel a lot more
than I thought. And when he keeps talking, he realizes how he really
feels. He heaps it one on top of the other and he wrings that thing until
the last drop is out. Every drop of that venom, it’s all there, poured
out before God with an honest mind.
Some people think they’ll lose their
salvation if they talk like that to God. Let me tell you this. You are
saved by the blood of Jesus, not by wearing the sweet face of a Christian.
David says this is how I feel, God, I have an honest mind before you. It’s
pretty obvious that God is not an Englishman, because He wouldn’t allow
this kind of thing. David wasn’t an Englishman, either, saying, "by
Jove, this is jolly good." David wouldn’t fit in British society:
that gentlemen/lady stuff.
We do get angry. We do feel like this at
times. Maybe we don’t put all the warheads together, but we do feel like
this. We do have such thoughts and most of us hide them from God. I mean
that’s silly, you can’t, but you know what I mean. And it doesn’t
only apply here; this is anger we’re talking about here is out for
revenge.
Other Thoughts
But there are other thoughts, as in the area of sex, we go through the
same thing. We present ourselves to God as sexless people because we think
God blushes at sex, but God is the one that invented it. And so we count
it a taboo, and we suppress it and it comes out and hits the National
Inquirer because the thing became a dinosaur because we never admitted
it.
We get these thoughts that now come into our imagination and our emotions,
and our attitude, is, don’t look God, don’t look, I’m going to hide
this, don’t look. We think God is Queen Victoria, so we say, don’t
look. We don’t have an honest mind with God. I’m thinking those
thoughts again, don’t look, don’t listen, I’ll call you when it’s
over. God, I’ll let you know.
God is Safe,
So Talk to Him
Look, if this Psalm teaches me anything, not only is it safe to bring my
emotions to God, but more than safe, it is desirable, for otherwise God
would never have recorded something like this for scripture. And I might
tell you, this is not an isolated Psalm; there’s plenty more like this.
I chose the one where he really goes for it, but there are plenty more
where we could read things like this. I say it’s safe to do this with
God and it’s desirable. When David said all that he did, God didn’t
kill him. There are no lightning bolts of judgment. In fact, I think God
says, "Tell me more."
Remember on the road to Emmaus when Jesus
came alongside those who were so depressed? In their own way they were
very angry. They had thought that Jesus was the Messiah, and the last they
saw of him was on the cross. Now, they believe him dead and buried. Jesus
comes alongside and doesn’t let them know who He is; these are very
angry, depressed people.
He says, you look sad, what’s going on.
And they said, "are you the only person that hasn’t heard the
things that have happened?" Of course, He knows. But how did Jesus
handle that? He didn’t say He didn’t know. He asked, "What
things?" Sneaky, right? He asked, "What things?" He knew
"What things"; He was the center of them. But, they needed to
tell Him. They needed to spill their broken emotions to Him, because until
you tell Him exactly, with an honest mind where you are, He can’t do
anything for you. How can you present something to God to deal with if you
deny it’s even there?
Don't Tell the
Enemy, Tell God
Notice something else here that’s very important. All that list of
terrible things that David wanted done to Ahithophel, is not addressed to
Ahithophel. That’s a very important distinction. If he had said that to
Ahithophel, either face to face, or at a distance, that would constitute a
curse. And when People curse you, you can feel it; it sort of stays with
you. Curses come with awful power. He wasn’t doing that. He wasn’t
addressing this to Ahithophel.
David was saying, God, this is where I’m
at. You see, it’s safe to have an honest mind with God. To say, here
they are, that’s safe. If I turn to you, that’s another end of the
spectrum. David does not in any way address Ahithophel with these words.
He lifts it to God.
And David does not follow through with
action. What he is saying to God is not announcing his intention to carry
it out. He doesn’t say, I’m going to make his children fatherless, he
didn’t say that, he just says he wishes it would happen. "This is
where I’m at, this is where my heart is, God." And he presents his
emotions in the raw to God.
Let's Suppose
I might put this to you. Supposing he hadn’t done this? And supposing
this kind of emotion was let loose inside of him, to boil and boil and
boil and boil. I believe he would’ve murdered Ahithophel. But, when he
let it out to God in this acceptable fashion, it was done. And also, let
me say it this way, if you have these kinds of thoughts in your head, if
you’re like me, thoughts like this take on gigantic proportions. But,
when you say them, you’ve said them, and nobody got killed. God didn’t
kill me, either. And suddenly there is a perspective that’s given.
Instead of going around inside of me like tornados, until I’m terrified
if God ever knew what I’m thinking, hating myself and all that other
junk, once I bring it out and say, God this is where I’m at, it doesn’t
really take on the proportions that it had when it was inside of me.
The Storm is
Past
And David finally is through. Verse 20, let this be the reward of my
accusers, from the LORD, and those who speak evil of my soul. (Let ‘em
have it.). Suddenly, it’s all over, the storm has passed. Verse 21. O
but thou, O God, the Lord, deal kindly with me for thy name’s sake.
Because thy loving kindness is good, deliver me. I’m afflicted and
needy. My heart is wounded within me. I’m passing like a shadow when it
lengthens. I’m shaken off like a locust. I’m like an insect, there’s
no strength in me. My knees are weak from fasting; my flesh has grown lean
without fatness; I’ve become a reproach when they see me….Suddenly, he’s
a very weak, helpless, almost frightened man. It’s all that was going on
inside of him. It’s gone. This is his heart. This is where he’s at.
But, he had to get rid of all that stuff to God, first.
Then in verse 26: help me, O Lord my God,
save me according to thy loving kindness; let them know that this is thy
hand, thou Lord has done it.
From Whence Vengeance?
What’s he saying? He’s saying, God, I put it all in your hands, and
whenever vengeance comes, let them know it was you. Not me. What’s
happened? In saying this, getting it out, there’s been a transfer. His
revenge is no longer in his heart; he’s transferred it to God.
He’s said, You do it, God. I’m hands
off here. You avenge me. David is free. All that has gone to God. An
honest mind, you see. If I don’t do this, then when I think of my enemy,
I say, God, you handle the rest of the world, this one is for me. Vengeance
is mine, says Gene, I will repay it. But instead David said, God these are
my feelings, and I hand them to you and I also hand Ahithophel to you. It’s
over to you, now.
David was saturated in the book of
Deuteronomy. If you ever read Deuteronomy thoroughly, you’ll find most
of his Psalms have their beginnings there. And I know one scripture that
David was saturated in, Deuteronomy 32:35: Vengeance is mine, and
retribution, (or payback) in due time their foot (that’s the feet of
your enemies) will slip. For the day of their calamity is near; the
impending things are hastening upon them, for the Lord will vindicate his
people and will have compassion upon His servants. David said, I believe
that. So, vengeance belongs to You.
Romans 12 echoes that in verse 19, it
says, never take your own revenge, beloved. Leave room for the wrath of
God, for it is written, "Vengeance is mine and I will repay it, says
the Lord."
This Is Faith
This is the essence of faith. This is faith
handing over my members, in this case my emotions, my state of rage; I
hand them over to Him. I hand over my imagination which otherwise would
have fantasized my vengeance. I hand over my mind, which otherwise would
have spent endless hours plotting what I would do, with a headache. In
this psalm, you’re looking at real faith. Here’s a man who dares to be
honest with God. None of this mealy mouthed cotton in my tongue, stuff.
This is where I’m at; You’re my
father, I can trust You. I come to You and You accept me just as I am, and
I’m telling You like it is, with an honest mind before You. This is the
faith that chooses to die to the self: to die to the me that says I can do
better than God in meting out judgment: the me that says, leave this to
me. He dies to that. He did feel that. But, he died to that. When I hand
it over to the God who loves me; I release it to Him. This is true.
You Forgive,
Not Absolve
Would you believe that in this Psalm and in the cluster of Psalms about
this, when David got through doing this, he had forgiven Ahithophel? This
is forgiveness. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that you absolve the person’s
sin. How could you even think that? You’re not God. Only God can say,
your sins are pardoned; you can’t say that. So, forgiveness isn’t
saying that the person gets off scott free; forgiveness is taking a person
and giving to them an undeserved release into the hands of God.
Among men they deserve your
fist right in their face, but you don’t deal with them as they deserve.
You hand them over to God, and say, out of my hands I release you to God.
But, you only get there when you’ve been through this, as in this psalm,
and admitted to God, this is how I feel, with an honest mind, I’m giving
this to You, I give him to You.
This Is
Worship
And the fact is, this is what worship is, this man is glorifying God. He’s
glorifying God as the one who cares for him; He really does care for him.
He’s glorifying God because He’s vitally involved in a relationship
with two people. I worship the God who says, I’m compassion. Vengeance
is mine, I’ll look after of you.
I know it doesn’t sound like what we
think of as worship, but the truth is, many people haven’t worshipped
God in ten years. Since the divorce, right? Since the divorce you’ve
fantasized every way you know to get a knife in the back of that creep.
And while you’ve gone around and around and around inside, you’ve been
saying this is my business, God get out of it, I’m not presenting this
to You, this one’s mine. And whatever things you’ve done on the
outside, you haven’t worshipped on the inside.
Whose Side Is
God On? His Own.
Because worship is taking all the rawness of my life and presenting it to
God with an honest mind. Now, just a minute, how do I know that God’s on
my side? It’s all very well, for me to tell God that I want vengeance
and then ask Him to do the avenging, but just a minute, the other guy is
asking God to avenge on me. Whose side is God on? I’m not going to live
in this fairyland and think He’s on my side when He’s really on your
side. Have you ever thought that? Is David innocent here? Did Ahithophel
have some cause? I could pray, God, look what he did to me, it’s time
You got him. And the trouble is, at the same time, he’s saying, God,
look what Gene did to me, go get him.
See God is on His own side. He’s not on
anybody’s side; He’s on His own side. No one controls God’s
compassion, and no one manipulates His judgments. Thus, whenever I’m in
one of these situations in terms of opening myself to God, I’m open to
Him showing me where I’m wrong in this. In fact, there’s another psalm
which is not quite as venomous as this, but it gets pretty close, and
having spilled it all out, David then prays, "search me O God, and
know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts and see if there be any
wicked, hurtful way in me. Lead me in the everlasting way." That’s
an honest mind. It isn’t that you’re using God to get at your enemy,
you want holiness, you want righteousness.
You Could Be
On Wrong Side
You do want justice, and you do give it to God, so you better be ready for
mercy, too. That means I open my own life to God first. Where am I wrong
in all of this? But, let me say this, very carefully, if we act in
bitterness, if we act in spite, if we go around in gossip sharing all the
rotten things she did, or he did, if we have an attitude of unlove, we
have set ourselves in a posture of hostility to God. God will never, ever,
revenge you while you act in unlove and bitterness. Because the truth is,
if you want to get even, if you want to jump in and give them what they
gave you, you’re both in the same boat, aren’t you? And you’re both
in the same position of hostility against God, does that make sense?
But, if you are going to understand God’s
vengeance, you’ve got to understand God. Because, He doesn’t think
like we do. God has taken the sin of man, that screamed for His vengeance,
into Himself, and He paid Himself for that.
Remember the
Flood?
Do you remember the flood? When God looked upon the wickedness of man and
said that He would destroy man? After the flood, He said, I’ll never do
this again. Not that He changed His mind, that’s another story, but He’s
saying, I won’t do it again. But what did He do? To try to teach those primitive
people, I say primitive in that they didn’t understand the gospel as we
do, God gave them a picture of Himself in the sky. Across the sky He
placed the rainbow. Every time they saw rain that reminded them of the
flood, they saw the rainbow.
Now what do you understand by rainbow?
Because we don’t use bow and arrows anymore, we miss the point. The rain
bow is a bow as in bow and arrow. Only which way is it turned? Toward God.
God said, the bow and arrow of my justice is now turned toward me; I
absolve my own vengeance. You sinned; I will pay for it. And that was the
very first beginnings of understanding, to a primitive people, of a
picture in the sky, that God sent a bow of justice against Himself.
Jesus Died For
My Brother
You see, when I release my enemy to God, I do so knowing that Jesus died
for him, too. My Christian brother that I have this thing with, Jesus died
for him. You see all of this brings me to certain brokenness. When I’m
raging, I don’t want Jesus to die for you. He died for me and He died
for a whole world, but He didn’t die for you. I want you to die your own
death; I want you to go to hell.
But, I release this to God and when I do,
I realize this is the God that turns the bow upon Himself. He has taken my
sin. He took your sin. He took the sin that you just committed against me;
He’s taken it to Himself. And I realize, He’s paid. And I’m
beginning now to move from my vengeance into God’s vengeance, which
means I sit with God and say, it’s dealt with in the death of Jesus. My
heart screams, somebody’s got to pay for this, and Jesus says, I did.
And I know I don’t have a leg to stand on.
Christian
Forgiveness
You see forgiveness, Christian forgiveness, is my choice. Hear me
carefully now. I choose to accept the consequences of your sin against me.
God chose to accept the consequences of my sin. When I forgive as a
Christian, I come to the point where I choose to accept the consequences
in my life of your sin. And when I say choose to accept the consequences,
I mean choosing to not revenge myself. All my revenge is given to God. So,
I choose to accept the consequences of your sin in my life, and I’m not
going to have revenge. I’m going to give you to God.
You say, I can’t do that. I can’t
choose to accept the consequences of that man’s sin in my life. Ha! You’re
going to have the consequences of that man’s sin in your life anyway. He
did it. And you can’t undo it. When someone hurts you, you are going to
pay the consequences of that for the rest of your life. And if you choose,
by the grace of God and by the power of the Holy Spirit to accept those
consequences, and give all revenge to God, you will become a partner with
God in turning evil into good. You have redeemed that situation. Order
our Album: Forgive, HOW? And Read
Our Article On Forgiving.
But, if you don’t, you’ll still bear
the consequences. You’ll spend the rest of your life trying to get
revenge, which will destroy your spirit, mind, emotions and body and all
your relationships will be poisoned. And you will be fighting against the
good plan that God had to bring into this. And on top of all the rest, you’ll
then have the consequences of your own sinful behavior of trying to get
even.
Go To The
Basement
Well, there’s a lot more we could say about forgiveness, obviously, but
there it is. I want to leave you in this lesson by asking you during the
coming week to start opening the basement door. There could be a stampede
once you do that. So, go somewhere alone, very seriously now, and begin. I
mean some of you were deeply hurt, abused in childhood, sexually abused,
or physically abused, and our natural thing is to want to shut it up. We
don’t want to know about this. You will never become the whole human
being in Christ that you are to be until you open the basement door and
let God have this; let Him know how you feel. Maybe it’ll come over a
period of time. But, the thing that happened within the last ten years:
the business partner that cheated you, the person you trusted that stabbed
you, the divorce, the other things, little stupid things that go on around
the house, that pile up at the office, become mountains and cause all
kinds of problems in relationships, learn to let it go to God as soon as
it happens. Don’t let the sun go down upon your wrath.
But, I want you to be serious about this.
That’s why I say go find a place alone. I have seen people who are bent
by anger and revenge and hatedred and their body is showing it and they
are haggard; I’ve seen these people allow the truth to enter them, and
to assume an honest mind, where they actually turn this over to God and
when you meet them again, they are an upright, radiant person, with the
glory of God in their face. You see, that can’t be done with put up your
hand, God bless you, it’s all forgiven. You’ve got to work at this.
And it may be next week that you’ll
suddenly remember something else in the basement which in the mercy of God
He didn’t let out to start with. You see, you don’t go looking in the
basement. The Holy Spirit is in charge of archives. You don’t back
searching for memories; you just wait until He brings them out. Don’t go
to a psychiatrist to go deep back into the past or anything like that.
This Is The
Way To Health
There it is. That’s what I want you to know. The only way you can have a
whole, healthy body; the only way you can have whole and healthy emotions,
the only way that you can have a whole and healthy mind, is to have an
honest mind before God. God bless you as you put these teachings into
practice. I pray that the LORD will bless you, in Jesus’ name, Amen.
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