Thoughts from my reading in Whiter Than Snow: Meditations on Sin and Mercy by Paul David Tripp. The devotional is indented.
Uphold me with a willing spirit. Psalm 51:12
Could there be a scarier spiritual dynamic than the hardening of the heart? Could anything be sadder to watch than a warm and tender man become cold and hard? Could anything be more spiritually dangerous than the capacity of a sinner to grow quite comfortable with doing what would have once assaulted his conscience? What's worse than coming to a place where you actually have the capacity to feel right about what God says is wrong? What could be more threatening than the thought that, as sinners, we have an amazing capacity to deceive ourselves? David's story is a case study of this kind of danger. David prays for a broken heart because, in his confession, he's realized that his heart has become hard.An amazing capacity to deceive ourselves – If we really believe that, we will be very careful in what we allow to influence us. The gateway of our eyes, ears and senses need to be protected. Small compromises lead to huge disasters.
When you read the story in 2 Samuel 11 and the words of confession in Psalm 51, you can't help but ask, "How did David get from the anointed king of Israel to a murdering adulterer? How could this good man end up in such a bad place? Such is the dangerous deceitfulness of sin and the disaster of the hardening of the heart. Here's the thing we all need to remember: sin isn't an event; no, it's a progressive movement of the heart that results in disobedient behavior.The progressive movement starts with the small movement; the little thing that causes a prick of conscience but is ignored or suppressed. Next time it’s easier and we sink a little deeper.
Let's consider David's story. David inadvertently saw Bathsheba bathing. The fact that he saw her wasn't sin, but what he did with what he saw began the process of sin. It's clear that David wasn't repulsed by the temptation. It's clear that he didn't seek God's help. Why is this clear? Because of what he does next. David sends a servant to try to find out who this woman is. This isn't the action of a man who's running away from temptation. David immediately begins to move toward what he knows is wrong, and so in his heart he would have to be justifying what he was doing. David finds out that this woman he was lusting after was married. But again he doesn't stop; he doesn't run. No, he uses his political power to bring her to the palace. What did David tell himself he was going to do next? How did he justify what he was about to do with a married woman?There a lot of things in this story left unsaid. What kind of woman was Bathsheba who bared her body in a place where someone like David could see. Is she like the women today who prance about with breasts mostly exposed and clothes so tight or revealing that little is left to the imagination? How hard was it to persuade her to come and hang out with the king?
As you read the story, at each point you want to scream, "David, stop; don't do what you're thinking of doing!" But he doesn't stop. Upon bringing Bathsheba to the palace he has sexual relations with her. As you read the account, you find it hard to believe that this is the same man that Samuel anointed to be king because of the character of his heart. But the plot thickens as Bathsheba becomes pregnant. Once more, instead of the pregnancy awakening David from his self-deception, it becomes the occasion of even deeper and greater sin.Today we would have another quick solution for David that also leads to murder – abortion. An appointment could have been made that would have taken care of the problem and no one would have known.
David does his best to use Uriah to cover what he has done. If he can get Uriah to sleep with Bathsheba then perhaps the pregnancy will be attributed to Uriah, and David's sin will be hidden. But Uriah refuses to participate in David's scheme. So what David does next, in lust-driven anger, is hard to imagine, even though by this time you know that sin now has a firm hold on him. David has his soldiers set up Uriah so that he'll die on the battlefield. And then David marries Bathsheba.So Uriah was aborted and David marries Bathsheba. Talk about a dysfunctional situation; what kind of woman marries the killer of her husband? It’s clear that sin marred both of their lives. Did they somehow think that after all this they were going to live happily-ever-after?
It's a tawdry and disgusting story, one you wouldn't read if it were a paperback at your local bookstore. But the story is helpful, for it pictures how sin is a progressive system of sinful desire and self-deception. It stands as a pointed warning to us all.As I think about this I see that we can’t do it by ourselves. We are no match for the deceptive power of sin. We need God’s power and we need good friends who will grab us by the neck when they see us straying. When things are good we need to give friends like these access to our lives – we sure won’t when we are on the way down. They can see what is normal and if things start to go bad they will know.
I know you're like me, and you too would like to tell yourself that you're not like David; but you know you are. Like me, you too get attracted to things that are outside of the boundaries that God has set for you. Like me, you're quite skilled at covering, minimizing, rationalizing, justifying, defending, or otherwise explaining away your sin. Like me, you don't always stop at the first warning that something is wrong. You permit yourself to step even closer to evil, telling yourself that you'll be okay. Like me, you allow yourself to meditate on things you should repudiate. Like me, you participate in the hardening of your own heart even as you tell yourself that you can handle it, that you'll be okay.
The physical acts of sin are not actually where the real action takes place. By this I don't mean that behavioral sin isn't sin. What I mean is that the real moral war of sin and obedience is fought on the turf of the heart. It's when the battle for the heart is lost that the battle of physical resistance to sin will be lost as well. When the heart becomes hard, the system of internal restraint that keeps one pure ceases to function as it was designed to function, and we say yes to that which God has called us to say no.And just like David, we need community; God never intended for us to live alone. Victory comes as we join with the ones He has placed around us; the Lone Ranger is a myth.
But there's hope for us. Jesus came to give sight to blind eyes. He came to release the captives from their prison. He came to give us new hearts. He came to break sin's dominion over us. He came so that we'd have the power to say, "No!" when temptation comes our way. He came so that we could live with open eyes and soft hearts. He came so that we could turn to him in confession and receive his forgiveness, just like David.
Where has your conscience grown hard to something that ought to prick and trouble it? Conversely, is there a place where you have been unwilling to do what God is calling you to do?Where am I blind to the answers? Can I even see when my heart is hard? Is the answer I would give only a smokescreen to hide what is really going on? I need friends and I need you Lord.
It’s about the time for the Race for the Cure. It’s a fundraiser for the Susan G. Komen foundation. They fund research, screening and treatment of breast cancer.
Too bad that they also give money to Planned Parenthood which is the largest abortionist in the world.
And be sure that every dime that goes to Planned Parenthood frees up other monies so they can promote and fund more abortion.
If you want to see for yourself, Google “race for the cure” abortion. You will find out they indeed do fund Planned Parenthood and don’t plan to stop.
Here are a few of the links I came across in a quick search:
Life Issues
Abortion Breast Cancer
This is from Colorado Citizens For Life:
Since Breast Cancer Awareness month is coming up, we need to discuss the abortion-breast cancer (ABC) link…and also talk about the abortion industry’s effort to conceal it. Here are some key points:
All six of the criteria necessary to confirm a cause-and-effect relationship between abortion and breast cancer have been met. (Eight medical organizations have now acknowledged this risk.)
The first study confirming the ABC link was published in 1957, 60+ years ago. Since then, at least 72 epidemiological studies (those assessing disease trends in large populations) have been conducted around the world. Eighty percent of them show abortion increases breast-cancer risk.
The only quantitative and comprehensive analysis of all the scientific literature on this subject found an overall 30% increased risk for post-abortion women. A National Cancer Institute study, conducted in America by a pro-abortion researcher, revealed even more disturbing findings: a 100% increased risk for those who’d aborted when they were under 18 or over 29…and an 800% increased risk for those with a family history of breast cancer who’d aborted as teenagers.
Now consider: Planned Parenthood (PP) has done more than 3 million abortions since 1977. In light of the ABC link, this means the nation’s largest abortion chain may be liable for another 22,500 deaths.
That’s why pro-life people are so upset that Komen/Race for the Cure officials around America have taken some $3,000,000 raised by well-meaning supporters…and given it to abortion businesses. (For example, the Aspen affiliate is giving PP $22,947. The Denver affiliate is sending grants to PP in Aurora, Ft. Collins, and Greeley and to another abortion facility, the Boulder Valley Women’s Health Center.)
Thanks for thinking,
Philip
Thoughts from my reading in Whiter Than Snow: Meditations on Sin and Mercy by Paul David Tripp. The devotional is indented.
You teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Psalm 51:6
Sin is all about foolishness. Sinners are fools who are able to convince themselves that they are wise. When I sin I convince myself that my way is better than God's way, that my thoughts are wiser than God's thoughts, that what I desire is better than what God has planned for me. Sin is all about how a fool is able to swindle himself into thinking that what's wrong is actually right.Sin makes us stupid. When we give way to sin, we lose logic and common sense. We do things that anyone in their right mind would run from.
Think of sin in its original form in that awful moment in the garden. There would have been no disobedience if Adam and Eve had refused to listen to the voice of another counselor. What was this counselor seeking to get them to do? He was enticing them to question, if but for a moment, the wisdom of God. He was enticing them to think that he was wiser than Wisdom himself. And he was tempting them to believe that they could be as wise as God.Adam and Eve may have started it but each of us keeps it going. Whenever we do things “our way”, we listen to the lie. We think we know more than the Old Man.
Check out what Moses records as being one of the things that attracted Adam and Eve to the forbidden fruit. Here's what's said in Genesis 3:6b: ". . . and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise." Now, this phrase is worth unpacking.Probably the biggest way to get the wisdom and knowledge of Christ is by letting the Bible infuse us with its truth.
You and I will never understand the full range of the temptation of Adam and Eve, David, or ourselves until we understand the fundamental nature of wisdom. Wisdom, in its purest form, is not an outline; it's not a theology; it's not a book; it's not a system of logic. Wisdom is a Person. You don't get wisdom by experience, research, or logical deduction. You don't get wisdom by education and experimentation. You get wisdom by means of a relationship to the One who is the source of everything that's wise, good, and true. In talking of Christ in Colossians 2:3, Paul says that "all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" are hidden in Christ.
Adam and Eve had all the wisdom they needed; no, not in their independent ability to figure out themselves and life, but in the relationship they had with Wisdom, a relationship that hadn't yet been tainted by sin. Tragically, they took the bait, turned their back on Wisdom, and received foolishness-the exact opposite of what the snake had promised them. This act of foolishness and disobedience began a storm of foolishness that has flooded humanity ever since.How true that is. It’s a bad trade off and in the end we are left with a poor substitute for wisdom.
No longer wise, now born into the world as fools, we all need to be rescued from ourselves. And yet, even though there's empirical evidence that we're fools (debt, addiction, obesity, conflict, anger, fear, discouragement, fear of man), we convince ourselves that we're wise and head confidently down pathways that lead to destruction and death. The way that seems wise to us isn't wise, and the way that is wise looks to us to be the way of the fool.If we are honest, we have to admit that we have been fools. Even in the midst of suffering we go on in the stupid way somehow thinking things will turn out better; our ears shut to all the cries of warning.
You can't argue us into wisdom, because every wise thing you would say is filtered through the grid of our own foolishness.
And so we need what David needed. Blinded by his own false wisdom and able to take tragically foolish actions that would forever alter his life, David needed rescue. No, he didn't need rescue from Bathsheba. No, he didn't need rescue from the temptations that accompany positions of power. No, David needed to be rescued from himself. He was held by the hands of his own foolishness. What David needed was Wisdom to come near and break David's hold on David. Like us, David needed the rescue of the Wisdom Redeemer. Then and only then would he be wise. Then and only then would he see, confess, and turn from the foolishness that had so deceived him.I confess I need that too. I need rescue from me and from my ways so I am free to follow the path of wisdom.
Thankfully, the One who is Wisdom is also a God of grace. He delights in transforming the hearts of fools. He finds joy in gifting us with the wisdom that can only be found when he's in us and we're in him.A question from the meditation:
Where do you need to be rescued by Wisdom? Where does Wisdom need to teach and enable you to live in a way that is wiser? Consider eating, relationships, decision making, private choices, finances, work, thoughts, daily habits.One place I need help is in overeating. I know the frustration of not being able to do it by myself. I know I would feel much better if I lost some weight but logic and good intentions don’t help. I would like God’s help and power and the wisdom to help me to live wiser.
