You Are the Man!

Proverbs 3:11-12, 10:17, 12:1, 13:18, 15:5, 15:32

 

I learned from a very young age to admit my guilt early and often. I don't for a minute want you to think I was some kind of pious kid: I wasn't. It just seemed like good self-preservation. If I told the truth early, the punishment was a stern warning. If my parents had to dig for it, I took a beating. The math was simple.

 

I took this early learning and used it throughout my growing up years. I remember my meeting with a high school vice-principal named Charlotte Smith. The student body called her "Charlotte the Butcher," (behind her back, of course). My fellow students were humming the "Death March" tune when I got my yellow slip summoning me to the gallows of her office. Was I scared? Well, quite frankly, yes I was. So I went in there admitting my guilt early and often...and came out with a stern warning...no one could believe it. They were just jealous.

 

In a sense, the lessons I learned kind of sound like today's proverbs. "Do not despise the Lord's discipline and do not reject his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves" (3:11-12). And again: "He who heeds discipline shows the way to life, but whoever ignores correction leads others astray" (10:17). I say these proverbs kind of sound like my early childhood lessons, but only kind of. There is one key difference: whereas I was motivated by escaping punishment, or at least lessening it, the wisdom of the proverbs is about growing into one's integrity, growing into wisdom, growing into one's relationship with our Sovereign and Loving God. In our dealings with God, unlike our dealings with parents and vice-principals and quite often with one another, we need not fear punishment. We need not act out of fear. Instead we know the punishment has been borne already by Jesus. And so we act out of a desire to grow in the knowledge and love of the One who cares enough to save us from ourselves.

 

Last week we looked at the David story of his dealings with Bathsheba and Uriah. I won't dwell on the story too much because the details are fairly familiar. Suffice it to say that David had lost the innocence of his youth, he had lost his desire for God, he had claimed his own power and arrogance, and they led him into sin: namely, adultery with Bathsheba and murder with Uriah as David sought to cover up his wrong.

 

But the story takes a gospel turn when David's pastor, Nathan, shows up and preaches him a sermon. At the moment David has no idea that he's listening to a sermon, for he isn't sitting in a pew and Nathan isn't standing in a pulpit. There's no explicit reference to God in the sermon, and there's no altar call. Nathan is good at this. He stalks his prey. He tells an artless, simple story about a rich man with large flocks of sheep who needs a lamb for a dinner he's giving. But instead of taking a lamb from his own flocks, he cruelly and arrogantly takes the pet lamb of a poor man living down the street. He kills the lamb and serves it up to his guests. David, drawn into the story, is outraged at this callous cruelty.

 

With each additional word in Nathan's sermon, David becomes more religious – feeling sorry for the poor man who lost his pet lamb, seething with indignation over the rich man who stole the lamb. Pitying and judging are religious sentiments that can be indulged endlessly; they are the Dunkin Donuts of religion: delicious to the taste but giving us only empty calories that do nothing to build up the Body of Christ.  Pity and judgment make us feel vastly superior to everyone around us, even as they are incapable of making any real difference in our lives. David, pitying the poor man and judging the rich man, seems to be becoming more religious by the minute. He is absorbed in a blur of religious sentimentality, and, when he speaks, he speaks as a righteous judge, passing a death sentence on the rich man. That is when Nathan delivers the punch line: "You are the man" (2 Samuel 12:7).

 

This is the gospel focus: you are the man; you are the woman. The gospel is never about somebody else, no matter how much we wish that were the case, no matter how much we live as if that were the case; it's always about you, about me. The gospel is never a truth in general; it's always a truth in specific. The gospel is never commentary about ideas or culture or abstract conditions; it's always about actual persons, actual pain, actual trouble, actual sin; you, me, who you are and what you have done; who I am and what I have done.

 

It is both easy and common to lose this focus, to let the gospel blur into generalized pronouncements, cosmic opinions, religious sentiment, moral indignation. That's what David is doing in his encounter with Nathan; he is hearing the gospel from afar, listening to his pastor preach about somebody else and getting all worked up about somebody else's sin and somebody else's plight. David here is living the religion of the ivory tower lament, the water cooler rant, the ever evolving blame game of Rush Limbaugh on the right or Michael Moore on the left, the religion of criticism and complaint. And it is not the gospel.

 

And then the sudden, clear, gospel focus comes: You.

 

The art of preaching, of which Nathan is a master, is to somehow or other get us around our third-person defenses –  "You know, she always... " – and our second person judgments – "Well, if you had only..." – to a first person recognition: "The truth is I...." David had his defenses broken; his judgments had been proven empty, and finally he realized what was happening in Nathan's words: he, David, was the one to whom the gospel was addressed. Addressed personally, David responded personally: "I have sinned against the Lord" (2 Samuel 12:13). David abandoned his religion of generalities. He quit giving out opinions on other people's lives, good or bad, and he realized his position before God – he needed help! He was a person in trouble, a human being who needed God, a sinner.

 

One of the more misunderstood features of the gospel by outsiders, probably the most misunderstood thing, is this: a confession of sin isn't about a groveling admission that I'm a terrible person; it doesn't require what is sometimes described as "beating yourself up." Insiders to the gospel know that the opposite is actually true: confession is full of hope, the path to freedom, a key ingredient in the life of joy. Confession is all these things because it is not primarily about us but about God.

 

Augustine had a slogan that talked about this sense of hope in confession. He said, "O happy sin!" Martin Luther had a similar slogan, “Sin boldly, but believe more boldly still in the gospel.” What they both meant, I think, is that only when we recognize and confess our sin are we in a position to recognize and respond to the God who saves us from our sin. If we are indifferent or ignorant to our sin, then we miss out on the good news of the gospel: Jesus saves! So we can say, in a sense, that the Christian life isn't so much about avoiding sin, (which is impossible anyway), as much as it is about recognizing God’s overwhelming mercy.

 

Clearly we don't want to face our sin because we like to keep our illusions of being good and godly, but such illusions are a form of self-deception. They keep us working so hard to keep up a pretense of our own goodness and godliness that much (most?) of our spiritual energy goes into the grand stage play in which we have cast ourselves as the lead. We think that if sin is discovered, or even admitted privately, we'll become weaker, less full. But stories like Nathan and David set us free to be honest. Stories like Nathan and David teach us that our fears are unfounded. If we stay with the story long enough – the David story, the God story, the Jesus story – we suddenly discover a surprise, a spiritual Cracker Jack, inside the act of confession: grace, mercy and forgiveness are ours for the asking. We think we will become less full, but actually we become stronger and more fully ourselves because we are brought into the presence of God. And in his presence, we are not demeaned but dignified; we are not condemned but saved.

 

David's sin, as enormous as it was, was wildly outdone by God's grace. David's sin cannot, must not, be minimized, but it doesn't compare to God's salvation from it. It is always a mistake to concentrate our attention too much on our sins; it's God's work that is the main event. Do you realize that after David sinned, he prayed the prayer we know as Psalm 51? In that psalm, four different words are used to name the sin. These four words are enough to map the whole geography of sin. But David uses 19 words to talk about God's forgiveness: 19! We have a finite number of ways to sin; God has an infinite number of ways to forgive. After a while we find that people pretty much do the same old thing from generation to generation. Sinning doesn't take much imagination. But forgiveness and salvation? That's a different story. Every time it happens, it is fresh, original, catching us by surprise. To sin is the opposite of creativity, and the more we're around it, the duller it seems. Salvation, in contrast, is "new every morning." To discover this gift of salvation is to discover the way to life.

 

How many of you know Roger Clemens?  For those of you who do not know Roger Clemens, he is one of the greatest baseball pitchers of all time and arguably the greatest pitcher of his generation.  Last week Roger Clemens spent time on Capital Hill telling anyone who would listen, including a Congressional sub-committee, that he did not do steroids.  Roger’s long time trainer admits to breaking the law by giving Roger steroids.  Roger’s best friend and long time work-out partner admits to using steroids himself and says Roger did them.  Even Roger’s wife admits to taking Human Growth Hormone from the above said trainer, but Roger denies knowing anything about that.  Right! Do you know what would happen if Roger came clean and admitted his fault?  The conversation would go something like this:

 

Roger: In 1998, as I grew a bit older, I decided to take performance enhancing drugs, and I am here today to say that I am sorry.  I apologize to my family, my fans and my teammates.

 

Media: Roger, that’s terrible.

 

Roger: Yes, it is.

 

Media: You should be ashamed of yourself.

 

Roger: I am.

 

The story would be over, and Roger Clemens could move on with his life, just like Roger’s teammate, Jason Giambi. Giambi admitted to steroid use three years ago.  Do you know how often Giambi gets asked about steroids?  Never.  He came clean, and now he is moving forward with the rest of his life.

 

        This gospel truth is not just for famous athletes, Hollywood stars, media moguls or business tycoons; it is also for people like you and me.  Back when we were living in Brenham, the church was preparing for a building project. During that time I was a maniac!  Every spare moment at work was spent preparing for the building project. Important tasks were given short shrift; peripheral work was completely ignored. When I got home I spent hours on the computer in order to teach myself graphic design software, so that I could prepare a brochure for the campaign.  You see, I and I alone was capable to see this project through to a successful completion.  Did I mention that I was a maniac?

 

        One night as I sat at our family computer my wife approached me and asked, “I’m wondering when you are going to come home?”  I had been home for four hours…physically, so I knew immediately what she meant.  Now, I hate to brag but I’m smart: certainly smart enough to have come up with some justification for my behavior, smart enough to have turned the tables on my wife to suggest why she was the one being unreasonable.  Again, I hate to brag but I’m also dumb: certainly dumb enough to have tried to do these things!  But in a gospel moment of pure grace I, for some unknown reason, chose not to argue.  Instead, by the grace of God, I chose to allow my wife to be Nathan to my David.  She spoke the truth of my sin and thereby liberated me to rejoin the human race and become again a husband, a father, a pastor.

 

        There is a wonderful story at the end of John’s Gospel (John 19) in which Pilate parades Jesus in front of the crowds calling for his death.  Pilate knows the leadership has brought charges against Jesus falsely; Pilate knows Jesus is no revolutionary, no threat to Caesar.  Pilate does not understand precisely what Jesus has done to earn the leadership’s hatred, but he knows he does not deserve to die.  So Pilate thinks to himself, “I’ll have my soldiers beat the holy hell out of him and maybe that will be enough to satisfy their bloodlust.”  So that’s what the soldiers do: they kick the krud out of Jesus and then bring him to Pilate. 

 

Do you remember what Pilate said to the crowds?  Pilate said, “Behold, the man.”  I believe God’s words were put on Pilate’s lips: Behold the man.  These words are the divine echo of Nathan’s words: You are the man.  Pilate’s words connect with Nathan’s words to form a divine tragedy that is also a divine comedy.  In Jesus, we no longer must be fearful for our sin – You are the man – for now Jesus stands in our place – Behold the man. Behold the One who stands in your place.  Behold the One who takes away your sin.  Behold the One who dies that you might have life.  Behold the One who is resurrected that you might have life eternal. Behold the man.

 

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